INVOCATION FOR RECRUITING A HOUSE SPIRIT

Courtesy of Claude Lecouteux

The day before Christmas Eve I posted a piece about Jultomte, the Swedish version of Father Christmas, who is really a guardian of home, land and livestock. In a class about “house gods” which I taught earlier this year, one student asked: if our house does not have a dedicated spirit or guardian, can we attract or recruit one? The answer is: yes we can!

Let me start with a refresher (also catching up those readers who joined our small community after that previous piece went out). I then explained that:

The word tomte is derived from the word tomt (plot or piece of land) and it refers to the guardian of this land (and by extension any homestead, farm or barn located on it). The tomte was believed to live in the barn, the hay loft or sometimes under a homestead. It is important to maintain a good working relationship with tomtar: keep a tidy farm, provide excellent care for the animals and leave out food offerings. If people did not do this, it was commonly understood that accidents would occur, the farm would fall into disarray or disrepair, key items would go missing, cattle would fall ill etc. As such they are similar to the “house gods” known and venerated in other locations.

Our own Tomte always receives homemade Christmas porridge and a glass of whiskey on Julafton (Christmas Eve). This is not shop-bought porridge, or indeed “any old porridge”: it is prepared from scratch and served with a generous lashing or real butter (I also sprinkle cinnamon on top! (This is called julgröt (Christmas porridge), also known as tomtegröt (porridge for tomte) in Swedish.

Photograph: Tomtegröt

So if your house or land (flat or garden etc., most people no longer live in sizeable or multi-generational ancestral homesteads!) does not have a dedicated guardian spirit, you can speak the following invocation:

Invocation for Recruiting a House Spirit (from Sweden): 

The individual would say: “Hail Earth, hail spirit of the land (elf, sprite, dwarf), hail family mother (perehen emäntä in Finnish)!”

In this way a spirit of place is recruited to serve as the house spirit. You may want to repeat this invocation three times aloud (for added impact). Next observe what happens: does a “tomte” or similar guardian appear? Does a guardian, who used to be connected to the location, return (perhaps)?

One serious concern I have is that we live in a very secular world. Older buildings are often knocked down to make space for high rises (or more efficient buildings with multiple apartments). What used to be farming land is steadily turned into suburbs, at least that is the trend in Western Europe.

However, unless there is local spirit worker (shamanic practitioner, geomancer or witch etc.) who goes out on the land and tells both the Landvaettir (spirits of the land) and the guardians of those older properties what is about to happen, we end up with confused guardians and displaced spirits, who no longer recognise where they are or what their role is.

This is something you need to bear in mind if you welcome back an old guardian: acknowledge their confusion, allow them to be angry about what humans did to their domain, but also reassure them that you will maintain and active and honest relationship with them from this point onward.

Let me remind you that in rural Scandinavia people believed (or rather observed) that the “tomte” (guardian spirit of a home and land) was often the first person who farmed the land and built the house with their own hands. After death they made a choice to stay around to keep an eye on things. Spiritually speaking, that is a (kind of) sacrifice. To voluntarily tie your fate to the actions of human beings in the material realm (when you have the option of to be free of that) is not a soft option. It is a choice made from profound love and care for land and animals!

Building or rekindling a relationship with them also means informing them (and giving them a warning well in advance) if you decide to move house or make another significant move or decision. I often say to students: talking to spirits and guardians is no different from talking to “regular human beings”: be polite, give notice before dramatic changes occur, lay out what the plans are (even if you do not personally agree with the plans of the local council or the intentions of a property developer, or whatever). Tell them if your neighbour is planning to cut down old tree (and talk to the tree, encourage it to prepare by drawing down its sap and so forth!)

Please note that the vocation shared in this essay was taken from a book by Claude Lecouteux, titled: The Tradition of Household Spirits: Ancestral Lore and Practices (p. 15 to be precise!) He is a French medievalist and philologist (a field concerned with the study of language in oral and written sources).

Below are a few (related) quotes from the same book:

Every place has an owner with whom the individual must reckon because this visible or invisible being must give his consent (for building a dwelling). p. 15 

There used to be a [VERY sinister! IA] belief that  “Every church requires a (human) sacrifice” and it was assumed that the sacrificial victim transformed into a supernatural guardian spirit of this church.  [Sometimes children were lured into performing this role, by saying “yes!” when they were asked if they wanted to be “the keeper of the keys to the Church, IA]. p.19

In Norway the Tomtegubbe, meaning “The Old Man of the construction site”, regularly transforms into the tunvord, the “Guardian of the Farm”. p. 22 

I hope that some of you found this information helpful. Best of luck if you decide to use the invocation! And please share in the comments how you got on!

I try (but sometimes fail) to get out at least one essay a week (sometimes several), due to travel, international teaching commitments and family care responsibilities (our family lives with Alzheimer’s and I have written several posts about that). All artwork shown in Substack posts is my own, unless credited differently! 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, 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 has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She 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 is currently working on a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) and on more books in the Green Bear Series. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings, which can be watched any time.

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/

Imelda, Forest House and Forest School, Sweden