POWER ANIMAL OR ASPECT OF OUR OWN SOUL?
Seiðr & the Old Norse Anatomy of Soul
I have a Forest School here in Sweden where I will welcome a new group of students next week. They are embarking on a program for people who want to work with Old Norse Traditions and magical or shamanic practices (Seiðr) in modern times. The previous group said that this course was life-changing and a profound homecoming to ancestral land and indigenous Northern European wisdom teachings.
What is Seiðr?
Seidr is a Norse form of shamanism or working closely with spirit through trance prophecy and oracular work, rune carving, magical chants and songs, sitting out on grave mounds, shape shifting, berserking, blota (making offerings) reading/writing poetry and knowledge competitions as practiced in the Viking Age and described in the Icelandic sagas (or Eddas)
Source: https://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/info2.cfm?info_id=211324
The photograph that accompanies this blog is a pen and ink sketch titled “Vargr Hugr”. Don’t worry, I am about to translate and explain!
Vargr is the Old Norse word for wolf. It lives on in contemporary Swedish as the word varg, for wolf.
The Old Norse word hugr refers to our cognitive function: thoughts, mind.
This is also viewed as part of our soul. It can leave the body and go "walkabout". Often when a person sleeps, but a person with magical training can (of course) do this at will.
I did this a lot when my elderly mother was still alive: roam around (generally as a polar bear) to check on her. Students and clients also report visits from me!
Core shamanism teaches that we have power animals. Researching and teaching indigenous Northern European material, I came to view this phenomenon in different ways.
If my hugr can shapeshift into a polar bear or wolf (which I know it can, because I have plenty of stories from clients and students to “prove” this, at least anecdotally!) then it is an aspect or dimension of my own soul. This also connects to the spiritual concept that human beings are multi-dimensional and that there is more to us than even we ourselves know.
When I switched from practicing and teaching core shamanism to teaching and practicing only indigenous Northern European material which reflects my ancestry and roots (a Frisian woman married to a Swede, mother of three Dutch-Swedish sons) a huge paradigm shift occurred. I taught myself Old Norse, and later Finnish (to get to even more obscure but powerful Nordic material!)
One of the things I was forced to revision completely was my concept of “Soul”. Until then I had thought of my soul as unique (obviously!) and separate from everything and everyone around me. The more I delved into Old Norse studies, the more I realised that my soul is porous and not unlike a cloud. It intersects with the family soul, the ancestral field and many other things. It is multi-dimensional and even has access to animal powers.
If that is so, does it change my concept of power animals? And yes, it did, to quite some extent.
I will leave it here for today. I may write more, on paid tier, another day. Alternatively consider doing a Seiðr introduction course with me. I have a many introduction level classes available as recordings in my online school: Pregnant Hag Teachings.
Imelda Almqvist at the Forest House, Sweden
I appreciate the image you offer of the soul being porous like a cloud - not a very western image, but certainly something I have experienced in Seidr practice, psychic mediumship, and other styles of shamanic practice. I also love your words here, "This also connects to the spiritual concept that human beings are multi-dimensional and that there is more to us than even we ourselves know." 20 years ago I never would have guessed how much spiritual practice would result in such a pervading sense of mystery and not-knowing, and just knowing that there is so much more going on that we could ever know of understand... and I love this.
Thank you for sharing this. It gives me great comfort. I remember the first time my power animal shifted. It was alarming to me cause I had been so limited in my view of what they could do. Shapeshifting continues to be a freeing and odd experience for me, not just my power animal. I remember one time during a journey I was so focused on a huge stone I slipped inside it and felt my entire being become the stone. That was a doozy. Again, thank you.