Most people when they find the word "seidr" and
decide to study it buy or seek out what is generally available on the subject.
Unfortunately most books and easily found net sources on this topic come from
popular neo-pagan/heathen/wiccan writers, their cronies, and copycats. The seidr seeker following the easy path finds
themselves studying instead wiccatru, neo-shamanism, or the pagan festival
phenomenon of "oracular seidr". Many writers of seidr are coming from
only glancingly heathen perspectives. This is true even of writers who've been
heathen for decades as some invested early in neo-magics as seidr and have
never changed their tune. For some seidr seekers this is all they are looking
for, and so their search will be short. Others though seek a deeper understanding. But where to
do that deeper seeking is the question. I've been pondering that question for a
very long time.
For the most part the seidr students of modern heathenry
have been looking in the wrong places. We've been looking at records written by
people going to lengths not to insult their Christian overlords. We've been
looking at records of magical practice written by people whose goal was to
demonize it in their recording of it. We've been looking for *pre-conversion*
"how-to" records of heathen magic when such things really do not
exist. Not in the form of step by step instructions with the underlying magical
principles laid out they don't. What does exist though is evidence of the
culture of the magics that we seek. We find that culture through myth, archeological
evidence, remnant folk custom, old law codes, shifts in medicine, hunting
practices, and farming practices. To see the cultures of old heathenry at all
clearly we must seek to understand how those old heathens would most likely
have perceived their realities. For those perceptions would have directly
affected how old heathen magics were enacted.
Some avenues of study that can be considered in seeking an
understanding of both pre-conversion seidr and pre-conversion heathenry are;
- · dualism
- · changes in concepts of time and predestination as can be seen in the changes in language
- · changes in moral beliefs
- · an ongoing continuing shift from smaller spirits and gods to bigger ones with a shift away from farm and house spirits to Christian concepts
- · a shift of consciousness from being first a member of something like a family to being a me first individual
- · changes in law codes are an excellent source to uncover old pagan beliefs
- · witchcraft trial transcripts are excellent sources to uncover what could be pried loose from old witches of magic
- · modern Scandinavian trolldom is also an excellent source, but the student really needs these other foundations to be able to dig the post-conversion and foreign elements back out.
- · leechcraft, that is medicine.
Dualism alone took me about three years to grasp. Someone
with a different background may easily have gotten it quicker. Dualism came
with the conversions; it is a Judeo-Christian influence and is a dominant pattern
in modern Western thinking. It does not matter if one is or is not raised in a
Christian household; Judeo-Christian thought is the basis for modern thinking.
It permeates everything. From Judeo-Christian thought we can then look at both
pop-culture and new-age influences. Both of the latter are based on the former.
It is not possible to be raised in the West and avoid these things in one's
primary conditioning. So put aside any belief that you've somehow managed to
avoid this conditioning and start digging at it instead.
When we look at changes in moral beliefs we can look at
things like how the power of women changed with the coming of Christianity. Recent
Norse related burial finds have been changing the greater modern perception of
women as lesser and establishing them as easily equal in the eyes of these old
heathens. We can look at Norse concepts and actions of slavery. We can look at
things like weregild, frith, and the yards. We can look at the Hebrides and the
stigma there on spaeing. We can look at when and where and how in medieval
beliefs older spirits all became the devil. We can look at the deconstruction
of the crofter'shelping spirits.
The shift in consciousness that I mention above from family
or community-first to me-first is from Christianity's influence. The Christen
faith has worked to erode family loyalties as being less important than those
to "God and church".
Modern Scandinavian trolldom would likely be discounted as a
source of study by many. However, several years ago I met Johannes Gårdbäck at
FB and joined his "TROLLDOM - The Nordic Folk Magic Tradition" group I
found those naysayers to be incredibly wrong. Johannes has spent many, many years
collecting stories and methods of trolldom throughout the Northern European
countries. These things are what is left of old folk magic in those lands, and
they retain much of those roots. Johannes' knowledge is phenomenal and he
shares that knowledge incredibly freely. He'll soon have a book out that has
been over ten years in the making. (There's a preview addition available now but
it only contains the first quarter of the book.) Everything that has survived
of seidr is in Scandinavian trolldom. One of the most important concepts is
that most people could do the same techniques as the seidr or troll person, but
if the issue was serious they'd often go to a professional. Another is that
what seidr folk or troll folk do when they manifest their magic is often a
reflection of mundane chores. The thing that gave me the light bulb moment
about mundane chores as vehicles for seidr concerned a salt grinder and court
cases. Trolldom has a method of literally in this reality grinding salt through
a hand grinder while spell casting to win court cases. To me this tied in so
strongly to a belief of manifestation that I had formed from my studies as to
bowl me over. I'm one of those who feel that there are essential keys to
heathen magics hidden in the eddas. I think manifestation is one of them. It is
shown to us in the tale of Ymir's death and reformation. When the trollkhona
actually grinds salt while working to shift probabilities her way she is
working the same kind of magic; the transformation of a thing into something
else, the doing of which forms an energy push like a cone of power and gives
strength to her desire. Many modern seidr interested folk have made this
connection with the craft of spinning. In this era of pre-made everything spinning
seems so magical, but it was once incredibly common. It is a craft that takes
one thing and transforms it to another. The essence of this what to me is a
core concept of heathen magic is sitting right there in trolldom, it hasn't
gone anywhere. Trolldom as it exists now
is not a religious thing; we'll not find much mention of our old ones there
other then to cast on Thor's day. What we can find there though is culture. And
it is through culture that we should be seeking to gather concepts that we can relate
to seidr.
Once we come to some understanding of a culture, once we've
managed to in any measure set aside our modern conditioning, then the magic is
right there. We actually do have a vehicle in modern Scandinavian trolldom to
find a lot of how-to guidance. But we as heathens need to do the extra work to
be able to discern the foreign and post-conversion influences in it. To do that
I suggest the other points of study as foundational work.
At the time of this writing I've been studying seidr now for
fifteen years. The first six of those I was part of the heathen neo-shamanic
movement. In an attempt to come to a better understanding of seidr I set aside
my shamanic practice to focus on the one without the influence of the other.
After three years of this I had an entirely different understanding. I'd come
to recognize the new-age influence in much of the mainstream of heathenry. I'd
come to have a lot of sympathy for those who'd tried so hard to point these
things out too. And I became certain that the only sure path to seidr is to
look at the practice without dragging in all the modern baggage. As I so often
say, this avenue of study is not the easiest. But I hope that some of you
reading this at least find the concepts brought up herein interesting.
Frith~
Frith~
