OF TRAUMA HELD IN LAND

And the Goddess of Fearsome Powers

As promised, here is an essay about trauma held in land.

Decades ago (I was in my early twenties) I once went for an evening walk in Stockholm (where I lived at the time). It was winter, the streets were dark and covered in snow. I stopped for a moment to look at some earrings in a brightly lit window of a jewellery store. A man came and stood next to me. He was looking at expensive watches. He made no wrong move at all, we both just stood there, but alarm bells started ringing in my brain and all other body parts: “This man is dangerous. He is capable of great physical violence and of killing of another human being. WALK AWAY!”

I made a slow and measured exit. SLOW, because I did not want to trigger him or give him the impression that I was frightened of him. As a survivor of a childhood defined by domestic violence (and being bullied in school) I knew that “a vibe of fear” would turn me into “prey”. So I walked off in a “I have lost interest and somewhere else to go” kind of way. He did not follow me and I will never know whether my instincts were right, or if they were operating in overdrive triggered by something in my past.

This man still appears in my dreams, every once in a while. The memory is incredibly vivid. Until today I feel I escaped a dreadful fate - but I will never be able to prove it. And who knows, perhaps we was a soldier on leave, who routinely experiences close combat. Or perhaps he was a refugee from a place where armed conflict rages and he used to be involved in warzone activities (where the normal rules do not apply). I have not way knowing for sure. But I know that his energy signature was strong enough to disturb my peace of mind.

Growing up in a family where severe physical abuse was an everyday occurrence, is not a good start in life. It sets patterns in motion that can take more than one human lifetime to heal. Just as we often find many generations of domestic abuse lurking in the past of an abusive parent or partner.

At age 57 I still find myself unravelling patterns and programming laid down in my early years. And yes, I’d much rather spend the time and energy on other things!! However, if there has been any positive in all of this, I would say it is the ability to spot danger. Also to sense when people are about to have an emotional meltdown or lose their temper. As a survival strategy, I learned to “read people” at a very young age.

Trauma is a big topic in Western society right now. Treatment and strategies for healing from trauma have entered the public discourse. Many high quality podcasts are made available, free of charge. Talking about trauma no longer is taboo. It is actively encouraged. One part of healing from trauma is about being seen and heard, about no longer feeling completely alone with your experiences.

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, (p. 97)

Having said that, I am acutely aware that animals suffer trauma too. Also, that human beings (collectively and historically) have many centuries worth of karma with countless animal species (and I don’t see that being worked on, or maybe only occasionally, by a rare individual who answers the calling). Blog titled Council of Animals.

As if that is not enough, land can also be traumatized. Especially land that has faced wars and bloodshed, violent deaths and atrocities. On a smaller scale (but in a similar way) houses, other buildings, parks, city streets and country lanes can be traumatized by crimes and serious accidents. These are places where the warp and weft of consensual reality loop around themselves and create dark tunnels. Emotions and memories from past events leak into contemporary life. They creep into our veins and yank the chains on our nervous system.

I often think of those warped structures as wormholes, as the term is used in physics:

» A wormhole is a hypothetical structure connecting disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations.

A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, different points in time, or both. «

While I was working on my fourth non-fiction book (North Sea Water In My Veins), I came across a story about a small strip of land in the north of the Netherlands (I believe it was in the province of Groningen) that held severe trauma and a strong energy of division and separation. Today a modern street with family homes sits on that land. Sooner or later, all couples in that street divorce and the individuals concerned end up leaving the area.

To me this is one clear example of trauma that is held in the land seeping or leaking into human lives, causing division but (really) seeking attention and healing. This process constantly (and more commonly) works the other way too: trauma and conflicts generated by human beings leave imprints and residues on (and in) land.

I wrote an essay here on Substack earlier this year which explored the song lines honoured by Australian Aboriginal Women. It described indigenous ways of living on the land, honouring the land, dreaming with the land and singing the ancestral songs of animals and seasons.

In Western culture we have lost that concept completely. Well, actually we have swapped it for a New Age concept of interconnectedness called co-creation. Unfortunately this mindset often focusses far more on what we hope to gain (creating the perfect life we desire) than on what we need to give (deep respect and reciprocity to all beings that support our existence, our human and non-human communities, occasional sacrifices on behalf of a greater good) or balance and heal.

Like most people with access to the internet, I am absolutely horrified by what is happening in the Middle East. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is foremost in our minds (and appears to have taken the global attention away from events in the Ukraine on our screens), but there is also an ongoing Islamic State insurgency in Iraq (armed conflict, kidnappings, terrorism). There is a huge humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan, where Western aid has been suspended because of the Taliban government (violent conflict, crime, food insecurity and acts of terrorism).

China too stands accused of committing genocide. Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls "re-education camps", and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms. This affects not only the Uyghurs but also also other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang. Source

The list of horrors goes on, also in many regions (and on continents) other than the Middle East. (I have a third essay on my drawing board, delving more deeply into these matters, exploring the role of spiritual teachers in all this).

Even if the human groups involved could miraculously learn to co-exist in peace and be respectful of human rights (which seems like a pipe dream at the moment), the land would still hold rivers of blood, mountains of bones (of the war-dead) and countless layers of trauma, pain and memories. Add to this the suffering and displacement of all animals and other non-human beings. The far-reaching and long-term consequences of such conflicts on communities and the psyche of individuals are immense.

The Secret Garden of the Bone Mother, by Imelda Almqvist

Land communicates with us, just as human beings do. It has moods and memories and displays subtle shifts, even between two footsteps. Land can be sleepy or dormant, but it can also have raw open wounds. Human beings who die an unexpected or violent death in a specific location can end up walking that land, sometimes for centuries (“on the human clock”). People trained in psychopomp work need to learn to make an important distinction between land wights (landvaettir) or guardians and lost souls in need of a full transition to (and compassionate reception in) the other world, the realm of the ancestors.

Having said that, much goes on with land which has nothing to do with human beings or actions. Forces of creation and destruction play out in cyclical ways. Then there are the voices and migration patterns of animals. The balance of animal populations, including the balance between predator and prey. Sexual energy flows in land and human-made creations, such as dams or industrial sites, can block that. This then has an impact on the ability of that land to regenerate itself.

Our forest here in Sweden can look truly forbidding on some days and I stay out. I have sometimes tried to visit places which refused “entry”, they didn’t grant me permission to enter, they didn’t open up. So I left. I have also seen people “pushed off the land”, deciding that a certain location or activity was not for them - but really responding to a non-human nudge or voice.

Memories are held in different layers of land. People trained in geomancy can excavate all those strands and map the “mythical archaeology” of land. I find the technique of time travel (or more precisely: dissolving or collapsing time) useful in some situations. This allows me to retrieve or activate a divine energy or mindset that was present and vibrant before.

When I did my degree in Art History (as part of a fine art course in Amsterdam) we studied Mesopotamia, the fertile land situated in the Tigris- Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the (so called) Fertile Crescent. It was the place where the earliest developments occurred in the Neolithic period. Inventions included the wheel, agriculture, mathematics and astronomy. We are, of course, talking about Ancient Sumeria, where Inanna was one of the leading deities. Her story is told in ancient texts, such as The Descent of Inanna and the The Epic of Gilgamesh.

When I feel powerless and demoralised by the never-ending reports of violence in the Middle East, I often turn to Inanna, the Queen of Heaven. I hope (no, I KNOW) that her legacy remains, deep deep down in the early memories of the land as a powerful expression of the sacred feminine. This is a divine energy that seems utterly suppressed and demonized at the moment. Women and children are treated in abominable ways in this entire region. Again, that is not even mentioning animal rights and abuse of non-human resources.

Let’s face it, Inanna was a Goddess of War as much as the Goddess of Love, fertility, sensuality and sexuality. Also of divine law and political power. The Babylonians knew her as Ishtar. One of her many titles was “Goddess of the Fearsome Powers”. There exists no Mother Goddess or Love Goddess who is not a Death Goddess as well. The giving of Life needs balancing by the taking or reabsorbing of Life (Death).

Just look at Norse deity Freyja, who is a goddess of love and sexuality but also a Chooser of the Slain (warriors). With her entourage of Valkyries she hovers over battlefields and decides who will die that day. Even the beautiful Greek goddess Aphrodite had an alter ego, called the Dove Goddess at the Oracle of Dodona, who welcomes home the souls of dead people (see the painting at the top of this essay!)

In my darkest moments I choose to hope that Inanna will inject divine wisdom into the heart and minds of the current (male) leaders of this region, as a deity and powerful divine ancestor of this sacred land. Inanna had access to ancient sacred knowledge. She made a Descent into the Great Below where she passed through seven gates and hung on a meat hook for three days. Inanna survived a gruesome dismemberment but she lived to tell the tale.

This means that Inanna is intimate with the forces of Love and Death both. I hope that she will anchor lessons about creation being the flip side of destruction, and death inevitably being followed by rebirth. Inanna knew that balancing injustices is one reason that war exists at all, a sacred necessity.

In its sacred manifestation war is about standing up for our beliefs and protecting loved ones and the most vulnerable people in society. On the mythical level, the role of the warrior is an honourable one. It is a person willing to sacrifice their own lives so that other lives can remain safe, so tribes and countries can remain intact, so children can be born and new generations can continue to live on a land where the bones of their ancestors are buried. We are currently seeing the most base and grotesque inversion of those things (war in its most ugly and lethal manifestation) but I choose to believe that one day they can flip back into their opposites. The body (in this case the land, the body of Mother Earth) holds the score.

This can be a form of spiritual activism: supporting the vision of better, fairer and more peaceful outcomes. Holding the vision of hope on behalf of those who have lost all hope.

The ultimate outcome always depends on all the choices we collectively make. Rather than dropping into feeling utterly powerless, we need to exercise the powers we actually have very diligently. We need to get out our spiritual toolkit and practice the muscle that is the human imagination. We need to learn about the Medicine that is our Imagination.

I try (but sometimes fail) to get out one essay a week, 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 sacred art, Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch (and of course short videos of all the amazing 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/

Twitter: @ImeldaAlmqvist