It comes up periodically:
"Where does a seiðman go when he dreams?" It's a question
with a lot of bad answers. The answer really depends on who you're talking
to. If you talk to a person with a Psych. 101 background, he says "Into
the recesses of the mind." Another versed in the New Age says "Into
the Land of Dreams" ("Oh, boy," says the seiðman
as he rolls his eyes.) The ever-wise skeptic will say "No place.
You're hallucinatin', bud!" Yep, everybody's got an answer, and
only about 2-5% have got a clue.
There's a variety of things
that happen to seiðfolk when they're seething. Well now, there's
a term that might require some explanation: seething. Seething is a
thing that happens to us. It is like the point where you drop off to
sleep. The eyes roll upwards, the body releases, there is a coolness
or heat, and a hot chill up the spine knocking the joints apart. It
is a flow of power out of the depths of Hvergelmir. It is the only luck
we have, and it happens to us. It comes unbidden. It is a falling and
flying at the same time like when der Glückspilz washes over us.
It is like the icy waters which forever boil up out of the original
Well, and, at the same time, the warm summer rains which wash back down
to the Land of the Ancestors.
Seething
comes from outside, a wind blowing into us.
Seething washes our soul out through a hole in the back of our neck.
Seething shakes out our spine like a dusty rug.
Seething jerks the arms from the sockets.
Seething flows the Waters through the top of our heads out through
our asses.
But what do I know. I only experience it; I'm not the guy watching.
I'm just the seiðman, not the shrink.
Seething is a weird
thing, a wyrd thing. Some feel it as a heat and, indeed, when I work
a healing it does feel like a heat. From the top of the head, down between
the shoulder blades, down through the triceps, over the bulk of the
forearm, and out through the hands. It is not just heat, though; the
hands grow in size, the palms become thick and hot and the fingers extend:
6 inches, 1 foot, 3 feet, sometimes. Some feel seething as cold. For
this seiðman, cold is the norm. A cold heat might even be a better
description.
Seething comes of
its own accord. Sometimes, we sing and it comes. Sometimes we are in
a special place and it comes (I hate to use the term holy place because
it may actually be in the J. C. Penney's tie department or in an alley
by a dumpster). We speak of seething as if it's a thing, but really
it's not. It is a relationship between a seiðman and this weird
(wyrd) fluidlike wind. Seething is not the wind nor is it the "shaking"
that comes over seiðfolk; it is the interaction between the two
like the drunkenness that comes from the interaction between a man and
a bottle of good whiskey.
Seething is a loosening.
The shaking that comes with the seething loosens the seiðman from
his body. (This is where the Psych. 101 students chime up, "A quantifiable
shift in consciousness, an altered state!") The Castaneda followers
like to call it "a heightened state of awareness." The rainbow
colored neo-shamans like to broadened the scope a little and mix daydreaming,
dreaming, imagination, guided visualization, and meditation all into
one nice Alice-in-Wonderland bottle labeled:
"DRINK
ME:
Instant Journey"
Fortunately, for me at least,
they are all full of crap.
The Sami noaide calls it
"diving"; the Old Norse called it hamfarir, "shape-"
or "shadow-faring." The hamr is variously described by a number
of folks, but basically it is a shade or shadowbody of a person, animal,
or a thing. It's home is in the Otherworld, but its shape dictates more
or less how a thing (or person, or animal) looks in the world of man.
As a seiðman, I travel in the Otherworld. I do things there: make
things, play music, make friends (and enemies), visit folks (some are
dead and some were never alive). An analogy might be apropos here: ham-faring
is like playing baseball with the rest of the gang, dreaming, guided
visualization, etc. is like looking out the window at the gang playing
baseball.
As a seiðman, it is
fairly easy for me to tell the difference between real players with
the Trollmenn's team and the ones who always sit on the other side watching
the game through glass windows.
There
is a distinct difference between a man who farms and a man who reads
about farming.
Sometimes , when I leave,
my body will sit and sway back and forth waiting patiently for me to
return. Sometimes, it falls to the floor like its asleep. Sometimes,
I don't bother to leave it because I am using it especially during a
healing session; I just stay inside it but extend the shadow body out
the hands, the chest or stomach. Often I leave to roam in the Otherworld.
The Otherworld is a shadow-place.
It is this world but with something extra kind of like watching a puppet
show but also getting to see the strings, the props, the puppet-masters,
the moving hands. The Psych. 101 student makes the mistake of thinking
that seiðfolk operate in a world of symbols. This is pretty far
from the truth. Seiðfolk are able to leave the world of symbols
at least temporarily; we are able to see behind the illusion to find
an answer, then we translate back into symbols so that the Psych. 101
student can understand it. He believes the illusion of his life and
believes he sees reality. Being the good folk that we are, we don't
usually tell him he's mistaken.
The skeptic probably has
the best answer because he says, "Seiðfolk don't go anyplace."
It's true (sort of...), we don't go anyplace. The only difference between
a seiðman and an ordinary man is that the seiðman operates in
a world with all the doors and windows open, and the ordinary man doesn't
know that the windows and doors even exist. He believes that the puppet
on the stage is moving of its own accord and from his perspective, that's
true. To understand how it's possible for puppets to move, he creates
sets of symbols and rules for manipulating those symbols, and by juggling
these abstracts, he infers the reality behind the movement. The seiðfolk
simply go and readjust the strings.
Well, it's not really quite
that simple. Seiðfolk do go places, but it's not that big of a deal,
at least not like the rainbow colored neo-shamen present it. We're just
the hired hands that go behind the scenes to untangle knots, pick up
props, clean up messes, and act as bouncers when some of the other stage
hands get a little tipsy. I have friends who only live in the Otherworld
(who have no existence in the world of man), and I have enemies as well.
We go places like anybody else: we go to the store, we go to work, we
go visit the family inside the mountain, we go to Taco Bell, we go to
the Land of the Dead. We see the same things that everyone else see;
we just see a lot more of it than the average folk–that's all.
Every single person interacts with ancestors, alfar, jötnar, and
trolls of one kind or another every single day. It's just that the interpretation
by the average person is usually in terms of good luck or bad luck.
We, on the other hand, can see the puppet strings. That's just the way
it is.
The Otherworld is large.
There's beings all over the place. Whereas in the world of men stands
a peaceful graveyard is an entire village of people waiting to see who
the next to visit is. Whereas in the world of men is an open meadow
stands an evil pit filled with snakes (Ever have an unexplained infection?).
Yes, the Otherworld is large and filled with Otherworld folks.
There's this little blond-haired
gal who lives in a cabin southeast of here. . . . well, that's a whole
other story.
