SHEDDING A HUMAN LAYER TO GET CLOSER TO ANIMALS

From the Land of the Midnight Sun

“May is the month when new life finds it voice”. I wrote those words in my art journal recently. I then dived into teaching a 6-day Seidr intensive (with evening ceremonies) here at my Forest School in Sweden, which left little space for private musings.

In Scandinavia, June is the month when the stars disappear and Dagr (the Norse god called Day, representing daylight) is omnipresent. We had tropical weather and almost no rainfall, for a month. I have been posting videos (two reels a day on Instagram) of different animal species arriving around 3.30 am to drink from the creek in front of our house in broad daylight (wild boar, deer, cranes etc.) People have been commenting and asking whether there is a typo in the time stamp, it must be 3 pm rather than 3 am surely? But no, we really have daylight at 3 am!

Picture: a family of wild boars arrives to drink from the creek. Their boarlets (wild piglets) are small brown mounds in the long grass! (around 3 am)

The couple we bought our Forest House from, eight years ago, told me that they had experienced 12 summers here and every summer was dominated by one animal species. They had one year where a pack of wolves was observed crossing our courtyard (the green open space between the three buildings), walking between one stretch of forest and another. This wolf pack walked back and forth right outside our kitchen window (and yes I am yearning to see that myself! The local Boar Hunter has told me that there currently are two wolf packs in our local area).

Another year they could not step outside without treading on frogs, because there had been a population explosion in Frog World. This week my students and I concluded that 2024 is the Year of the Dragonfly! There is an absolute abundance of them. I have become quite skilled at catching them with cupped hands, inside the house or school, and releasing them to the blue skies outside.

Morning fog and the Moon rising over the treetops at 2 am

I spent one month alone here in January. There were only a few hours of daylight and it snowed every day. To have a shower (our bathroom is in a separate building) I had to dig a tunnel first. I made sure to keep a spade inside, by the front door, in case I woke up completely snowed in. Temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees Celsius. Unlocking the front door in the mornings involved using a hair dryer! I was wearing five layers of clothing (inside the house!) Yet, this month was so magical and transformational - profound soul alchemy occurred- that my heart already yearns to experience this again. Cave time. Hibernation time. The primordial teachings of Snow, Ice and Fire, the lead actors in the Old Norse creation story.

I soon realised that I had started shedding my hyper busy and alert human “energy field” or vibe. Animals allowed me to come much closer. They were not (no longer) disturbed by my human presence. During those very limited daylight hours I often found myself running with herds of deer in the snow. I took immense joy in seeing my own footprints appear next to their hoofprints. We were making art together, ancient dreaming tracks and song lines became visible to the human eye!

The thought came that if a hunter were to accidentally shoot me there and then (I always wear a fluorescent yellow coat for maximum visibility!), this would not be a bad way to go. Imagine running with deer straight into other worlds! (And no, I have no death wish. Nor am I suicidal. I want to live long enough to meet and enjoy my grandchildren!) It was a thought that arose from a profound non-egoic state of unity consciousness with all the beings around me.

There can be a sense of liberation in coming face to face with our own insignificance in the greater Web of Life. Human lives are short. Human egos are large. We get very busy with things that (perhaps) do no matter in the final reckoning. Living my life as a Forest Witch resets my priorities quite dramatically. Spending time in big cities (predominantly London) usually scrambles my nerves again.

I have also been reflecting on how much of history is human history, with a focus on wars and political leaders. A friend of mine likes to say that “history is politics [of the past] solidified”. I have a degree in Art History, but my course only covered Western Art History, with a focus on male artists. (Thankfully we did cover prehistoric cave art and I am a rock art fanatic until today!)

I often wonder what history books would look like if they were written by animals, or from the point of view of animals…

Sooner or later all my musings gravitate to the places on our world map where armed conflicts rage and/or oppressive regimes blight human lives. In my first book (Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life) I listed significant horrors children face in our world (from sex trafficking and child labour to being used as human shields in warzones). In my third non-fiction book (Medicine of the Imagination) I took a deep dive into shadow work and explored how we human beings need to harness our powers in terms of creating reality.

We know that human beings can be traumatized. Many people will acknowledge that animals can be traumatized too. What we hardly ever talk about is that land can also be traumatized. Especially land that has faced wars and bloodshed, violent deaths and atrocities, crimes and murdered babies.

So that will be the topic of my next essay.

I am typing this at our kitchen table. Outside the window a crane couple have just led their chicks to the creek to drink water. The weather is changing and temperatures are dropping. Suddenly Sweden is no longer a “tropical country”!

Change can occur overnight. Let me say that again (in a slightly different way), because it is a wisdom teaching: The world can change overnight. It depends on all the choices we collectively make.

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 the wildlife here!), please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you!

Imelda, Forest House and Forest School, Sweden

Wild boar running in broad daylight at 3 am!

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