OF SELKIES AND SHE WOLVES

Sacred Art post #2

TWIN SEAL SOULS

Is there such a thing as “feral teaching”, in the life of a Norse Forest Witch?

A group of amazing women just gathered here, at my Forest School in Sweden, for a week. They are my Seiðr (often but incorrectly referred to as Norse Shamanism) students, deeply committed to walking this indigenous and ancestral Northern European path. They are fierce and feisty. They are wise and compassionate too and Elders in their own communities (they are from different countries and continents). By the way, my program is open to men as well - but this cohort just happens to be all female!

We did one ceremony on the forest edge where we all howled like wolves. Our local wolf pack howled right back in response. People could not believe their ears. Did that really happen?? Yes, it just did!

The author Clarissa Pinkola Estes nailed it: we are Women Who Run With Wolves!

...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

Here are some wolf paintings:

NIGHT FLIGHT (Flying on a Wolf Bone)

LONE WOLF - OPENER OF THE WAYS

I WILL TAKE YOU TO THE PLACE WHERE YOU WILL BE DEVOURED!
(A "Raw Dreaming" Version of Red Riding Hood's story)

I have always been interested in fairy-tales and myths, because I see them as ancient roadmaps in story-format, passed on to us by our ancestors. One friend fondly calls me Mother Goose and I like that! He's got the measure of me!

During the Covid-19 Lockdowns, fairy-tales became more prominent in my artwork. I started “dreaming in fairy-tales” and often my dreams were variants (or alternative versions) of well-known stories. As a "Dream Archaeologist" (a title bestowed on me by my colleague and friend Robert Moss) I started wondering whether I was perhaps retrieving earlier versions of fairy tales. Versions that had not been filtered through either Christianity or the Romantic period. In other words: is this (just possibly) pre-Christian ancestral material surfacing from the depths of our Collective Memory or Collective Unconscious?

The painting immediately above this segment started off as a sketch in Sweden, where I had a dream, sleeping alone in the Forest House, about Red Riding Hood. In this dream, her Grandmother had shapeshifted into a wolf because her job as a Crone was to be the Mistress of Initiation for younger generations. She literally told Red Riding Hood: "I will take you to the place where you will be devoured AND REBORN!" My dream ended with the image I have painted: Grandmother Wolf pregnant with Red Riding Hood gestating her way to (re)birth. Her placenta looked very much like the Tree of Life or World Tree, holding up our world.

Red Riding Hood would, eventually, be re-born, having mastered the sacred art of rebirthing herself so she could start initiating other people herself.

RED RIDING HOOD GREW UP AND BECAME A FOREST WITCH

(Pen and Ink drawing made at midnight in the Forest House!)

THE FOREST OF RED RIDING HOOD

As if that was not enough magic (!) our Circle also found a dead (baby) seal on a secluded nearby beach. The soul or spirit of the seal invited us all to reclaim our selkie selves. After more ceremony (and some very smelly “real life dismemberment” episodes!) all women flew home with precious seal bones in their bags.

MOTHER OF SEALS AND SOULS

SEAL PERSON

SEAL DREAMER

I will close this piece with a few words (written in 2023) about the painting that appears at the very top of this post:

This painting was completed on two consecutive days. There was a great urgency to its emergence. I don't have a coherent or smooth story about this painting. It was based on a dream where I was a selkie in the Arctic ( a seal woman) and my husband was a bear (but not a polar bear!) We had just had twins, "twin seal souls" and their skin was the colour of rocks and stones, in a beautiful way.

The twins belonged to the land and remained part of the land (that land being Greenland). They were only placed in the care of Bear and Seal Woman to make a journey in the Spirit Kayak (experience a physical life on Earth). After that they would return to being features or forces in the land. Arctic land with icebergs and an enormous ice cap: Kalaallit Nunaat (White Earth).

I can't really tell you more. It was a push to even squeeze out the words above. I hope that the painting itself will tell you more. And perhaps you will tell me what the painting communicates or conveys to you, in the comments? Or perhaps some paintings defeat words altogether... and that is fine too.

I was teaching a Seiðr Introduction course in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in April this year. Due to blizzard conditions and power lines coming down, the course had to be hosted by another venue. The woman who runs this centre told me proudly that (since I last saw her) she had adopted a dog, called Jasper, who is of wolf heritage (meaning part dog and part wolf). I arranged with the staff that Jasper would pay our Circle a visit, just after I had told the story of Norse god Tyr and the Fenris Wolf. And so it happened! We were all talking about wolves and Jasper bounced into our Circle!! (You will see a picture of Jasper and me just below this essay!)

Feral teaching? Yes, I think it is a “thing”! Let’s keep it going!!

My next sacred art post will answer a question from one of my readers about emerging artists seeking acknowledgment.

I try (but sometimes fail) to get out at least one essay a week (sometimes two), 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, 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 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/