Winifred Hodge Rose
Here are a few excerpts and images from the chapter on the Ferah Soul in my book Heathen Soul Lore Foundations. These are offered as a brief set of meditations on the nature of the Ferah soul. To read more about the Ferah soul on this website, here are some links:
https://heathensoullore.net/born-of-trees-and-thunder-the-ferah-soul/
https://heathensoullore.net/study-guide-2-exploring-your-ferah-soul/
Enjoy!
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As Bor’s sons were going along the sea strand they found two trees, and took up the trees and shaped men therefrom. …They gave them clothing and names, calling the karl-man Askr and the woman Embla. (From Gylfaginning in the Prose Edda.)
Odin said: My clothes I gave, along the way, to two tree-people. They thought themselves heroes when they had clothing; the naked person is ashamed. (Havamal verse 49, in the Poetic Edda, my translation.)
Until three came, crossing over from elsewhere, potent and loving Æsir from their homes, and found on the land Ask and Embla, with little megin, lacking ørlög (without human power and destiny). (Völuspá verse 17, in the Poetic Edda, my translation.)
Tree and Storm, Earth and Sky: The Ferah Soul.
In these beautiful passages from the Old Norse lore, we see that in the misty depths of time, the Gods shaped human beings out of trees.
Though in biological, evolutionary terms, humans are more closely connected with animals than with trees, there is a unique characteristic that trees and humans share: we are both upright, vertical, and by our upright nature we serve as conduits between earth-power and sky-power.
The name for this soul is descended from *perku, a very ancient word that is related to names of tree species, mountains, life-soul, humans as ‘children of this soul,’ breast / chest (home of this soul), names of Indo-European Thunder Gods and Earth Deities, and words for ‘strike,’ related to lightning-strike. The names of Thor’s mother Fjörgyn and Frigg’s father Fjörgynn are related to this soul-word.
Trees, mountains, thunder, lightning, Earth and Sky Deities: our Ferah soul is connected with all of these.
So, let’s tell a story, a story of beginnings, an Old Norse story, but with Thunder God and Ferah soul given their places this tale.
A New Tale of Beginnings
Trees, rooted in Mother Earth, attract lightning bolts, Sky-God power. And so, one mythic day, Thor rode the clouds above a forest in his beloved Midgard, while from Asgard three mighty brothers set forth in that direction, all coming at last to a strand between the forest and the sea.
This slender strip of no-man’s-land stood between Land and Sea, Here and Otherworlds, Matter and Spirit. Together the Gods came across two trees there, trees with great Ferah-spirits of their own that drew the Gods’ awareness like magnets.
Raising his Hammer, the Hallower of Midgard gave the life-releasing blow, striking one tree on the fore-swing and the other on the back-swing.
The trees-becoming-humans stood there between Mother Earth and Father Sky, between negative and positive poles of power, and felt the God-mains flowing through them in brilliant surges of actinic light.
And so the Ferah-souls within these trees burst forth as flames and were transformed into Ferahs of new beings, human beings, different but akin to the ancient spirits of the woods.
The Sons of Bor gave their great gifts: breath and spirit, wode and speech. They clothed these transformed Ferah-spirits with the human shape, the Hama, so they would not be naked spirits in a world of tree-clothed wights. Human Hamas are so skillful and powerful that Ask and Embla, as Odin remarked, felt like heroes when they had been so clothed!
At Ragnarök, human souls will take shelter within the beleaguered World-Tree. Then, at the beginning of the new cycle of time, Lif and Lifthrasir will come forth as flames of life from the sheltering wood, just as their forebears Ask and Embla did, so many generations before.
Powerful Ferahs after Death
The Ferah soul may be linked with the Disir and Alfar ancestral spirits, which I believe are the Hugr souls of the ancestors, and with the spirits of the land. I think that one possibility, among others, for the Ferah soul after death is to accompany its partner Hugr soul, and perhaps one or more landwights as well, to form together a powerful ancestral or semi-divine land-warder spirit.
A modern carving of the German Goddess Frau Holle, also known as Mother Hulda.
Humans, Trees, Gods and Spirits
Like trees, people are nourished and sustained by Gods of earth and sky. Like trees, we are sometimes struck by lightning / God-power, and if we do not burn to death, then we burn with life as conduits of God-power into the world.
Great Yggdrasil is the backbone of the multiverse; the Irminsul pillar-tree unites earth and sky; Idunn sustains the Gods from her magical apple tree. Donar-oaks and other mighty Midgard trees sheltered assemblies and ceremonies of the folk through time immemorial. Ancient Greeks traveled many miles to hear Zeus Thunder-God whispering his oracles through the Oak of Dodona.
Trees played the same central role in the worship and communal practices of Celts, Slavs, and Balts as they did with the Germans. The religions of the Pagan Indo-Europeans, past and present, would not be what they are without the holy presence of the trees.
Sunlight slanting through the solemn, silent forest shows us that even the greatest cathedrals with their stained-glass windows and carven columns are only pale reflections of the oldest temple of all. Beyond the logic of science and genetics, which are true in their own way, the human spirit knows its kinship with the trees.
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Photo credits:
1) “Forest ray of sunshine.” www.Pixel.la Free Stock Photos, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
2) Purple lightning. Jeremy Thomas jeremythomasphoto, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
3) “Lightning ground storm.” Brandon Morgan littleppl85, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
4) “Schnitzerei ‘Weinende Frau Holle’ am Ostufer des Oderteich. Kassandro, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
5) “Waldimnebel.” Reinhard Hurt, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons