A MYCELIUM OF ROOTED SOULS

About Creating Small Islands of Coherence

NIGHT FLIGHT: Flying on a Wolf's Bone, painting by the author

“She creeps through the mountains and the dry riverbeds, looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing. Then she stands over the criatura, raises her arms over it, and sings out. Hence the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred, La Loba sings some more, and more of the creature comes into being.”

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, from her book "Women Who Run With The Wolves"

I am back in Sweden and I have entered a three-week period of complete solitude at the Forest House. I am not planning to see any human beings during this time (but if a lost hiker shows up, I will offer them a cup of tea and directions for getting out of the wilderness!)

The Mist is my close companion at the moment. She is teaching me how to be a Mist Witch (or Wit Wief in Dutch). She is pulling me back into the Mists of Time while I sleep, where the Ancestors show me their bones and teach me daily lessons and survival skills. She weaves milky webs of enchantment, which look like a cross between spiderwebs and ferns. They contain fractals, repeating patterns at different scales. She, the Ultimate Pale Lady, is encouraging me to read those patterns and decipher or unlock other ways of being in this beautiful world. This morning I woke up at 5 am, to a pale waning gibbous moon sailing over the white-out. The Forest House had been gift-wrapped in ethereal ribbons while I slept.

Recently I created a Sacred Art post on Facebook. I typed it in spontaneously one morning, immediately after writing my Dream Diary. Some people said: please write a longer piece and explain what you actually mean with those words. This essay presents my attempt to so, but it was hard to write. It is hard to compress timeless visions into everyday words.

HAG SHACKS (HER AND HIS), 2025

We live in a time when we all need to map all our sources of power (including our inner, personal, spiritual resources) as it is only too easy to become overwhelmed and bombarded by bad news. To perhaps feel insignificant, without hope or depressed, out of options.

Our sources of power can be amplified by connecting to kindred spirits, "A mycelium of rooted souls", a forest floor that feeds regeneration.

My husband's "Hag Shack" floats (it is a boat), so it looks different for all of us, but we need to have a base in the Wild, to access our inner wildness and sit in council with our spirit team, the Wild Ones, the Ancient Ones, the Ones Outside Time.

As Baba Yaga's Daughter I will never be tamed... I will tend the Flame of Hope even when the Forest burns.

The collective feeling of powerlessness is very real right now. We are bombarded with bad news. We observe world leaders make highly questionable decisions, following the (usual) principles of greed, ego and self-interest and affecting the lives of many. The Ancestors keep reminding me that true leadership is about trust and being in service to your community and land.

The Forest has taught me some lessons for the times I feel disempowered and I will share them with you:

• Following the spiritual principle that “what I focus on grows” (because I feed it attention), I need to operate spiritual hygiene around what I put prolonged focus on. Living in denial is no good either, but I can set short windows for updating myself (on world events) and then put my focus back on the things I want to “grow” or cultivate: care for loved ones, generosity in sharing wisdom which might help other as much it helps me, acts of courage and kindness, small acts of disrupting negative patterns, and yes beauty: trying to capture the enchantment of other worlds and spirit allies in paintings.

• Remember to call on our compassionate ancestors (both personal ancestors and ancestors of place and lineage). Our ancestors survived many events that were almost beyond our comprehension - they are the Memory Keepers and they are willing to be our teachers if only we listen.

• Stay in close communication with the land. Enter periods of prolonged silence and listen to the wisdom of animals, birds, rocks and oceans (not only to loud human voices).

• Remember my/our invisibility cloak. Venture into the darker realms unseen. Witness and observe. Be guided as to what is needed. Give a helping hand and plant different seeds.

• Do not shut myself off from collective pain but do not be completely consumed by it either. Be like a skilled therapist: create safe sacred spaces, altars and containers for trauma. Create ceremonies and dedicated places where healing can unfold.

• Create small islands (or stepping stones) of coherence. Even my community of subscribers here on Substack is intended as one such island: a place where (often unpopular) topics can be shared and discussed (such as scapegoating or spiritual narcissism). Or as one loyal reader put it recently: “Keep writing, it helps those of us who feel isolated in our thoughts.”

• All of us together can be like a forest floor, a web of sturdy roots connecting kindred spirits. Together we can shape the ground that we all walk on, create the soil our crops grow on, that will nourish our children. (This is also the soil that the bones of our Ancestors rest in).

I believe that communities actively need to build and guard such islands of coherence, in partnership with the land, the sea, the animals, the birds, the weather spirits etc. That is what I mean by a mycelium of rooted souls. The times we live in encourage a growing disconnection through the illusion of greater connection: screens and scrolling. We are constantly talking to people who are not in our immediate surroundings (and often people we have never even met in person!) while ignoring the people who are physically around us. We can choose to reduce our time online and invest that time in our local communities or in-person initiatives instead. We can choose to rethink our priorities and prioritise “important” over “convenient”. We can also choose to put most of our focus on the brave and vulnerable rather than on the power-hungry or self-serving.

The concept “WILD” comes up a lot in my dialogues with the Forest spirits, wilderness and re-wilding ourselves. Perhaps ask yourself the following question:

What are the virgin territories within myself?

Which parts of myself (or my life) need re-wilding?

How can I retrieve a feral (less socially conditioned, less culturally programmed) self and step outside the bounds of societal structures which are designed to control and contain us?

And no, I do not recommend that we “walk into the wilderness, never to be seen again”. That is a romantic but ultimately dangerous fantasy (for most people, other than die-hard survival experts). I am speaking of smaller doses of wildness: learn how to forage and reduce your supermarket bill! Learn a foreign language and discover a new lens of perception, a doorway on cultures different from your own. Master the art of deep listening, not only to humans, but also to non-human beings and forces. Engage with the notion that words are big magic and really listen to yourself and others. What are we all co-creating by blindly speaking the words we have always used? What is the language of Change? Do we need to coin new words or dust off old words?

WOLVERINE: MY HAG SHACK IN FINLAND, Arctic Series, painting by the author

Last but not least: As Baba Yaga's Daughter I will never be tamed... I will tend the Flame of Hope even when the Forest burns. Those words were inspired by the life and work of a visionary artist called Meinrad Craighead (1936 - 2019). To me eyes her paintings are visual prayers.

Meinrad lived in a small cabin by the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA). She had a close relationship with the bosque, the woods growing on both sides of this river, and all creatures that inhabit it. One day in June 2006, the bosque (on both sides of the river) went up in flames. The fires raged, out of control, devouring all trees and creatures in their path.

Meinrad was given the choice of evacuating her property or remaining there, at her own risk. She chose to lie on her bed in total darkness. She tuned into the fire, giving it her full attention. She emotionally entered and shared the horror of the burning trees and trapped animals. She survived and made a powerful series of drawings about this, called The Bosque Fire Drawings.

Meinrad is one of my role models and sources of inspiration. I often think of her in her cabin, witnessing all the suffering in the woods burning around her and the coyotes trying to outrun the flames with burning tails.

I am not as brave as she was (by a long stretch), but I remind myself that staying in darkness (instead of fleeing and escaping) and witnessing pain on a visceral level is a powerful act of spiritual work. And if you have shamanic skills, you can add animal communication, psycho pomp work and/or working with the land as a living breathing body.

And no, of course you cannot do this 24/7, every day again. But you can do it as an act of attention and compassion on occasion, when you feel well-resourced enough to do this.

We need to look for our (ancestral) wolf bones, and reassemble entire skeletons. After that we need to sit by the fire and think about what songs we will sing… That is the work of Hags…

Does my post make more sense now? Please let me know in the comments!

I try (but sometimes fail) to get out at least one essay a week (sometimes more), due to travel, international teaching commitments and family care responsibilities (our family lives with Alzheimer’s and I have written several posts about that). If you would like to see regular posts about about Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch (and of course short videos of all the wildlife here!), please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you!

Imelda Almqvist, Forest House and Forest School, Sweden

BIO FOR IMELDA ALMQVIST

Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) was published in June 2022.

The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.

Imelda appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.

Imelda’s eagerly awaited book about the runes (the title is Portals, Patterns and Pathways, a Handbook for Rune Magicians, Star Gazers and Myth Makers) will be published by Collective Ink on 26 May 2026). She is currently working on a book about Inuit deities and mythology.

Imelda prefers being contacted by email. She only rarely checks (or responds) to DM’s on social media platforms.

Please note that Imelda’s on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remained available as recordings, will go off-line on 3 September 2025! PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT AND FULL EXPLANATION

Website:

http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/

YouTube Channel: youtube.com/user/imeldaalmqvist

Online School: https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imelda.almqvist/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/almqvistimelda/