Heathen Soul Lore #1
Winifred Hodge Rose
The first step in pursuing a study of Heathen souls is to define what I mean by a ‘soul.’ There are two main approaches to this definition that I’m aware of. One of them I’m calling the ‘psychological theory of the soul’: the study of the faculties, capabilities and qualities within a person, their ‘soul parts’, which interface systematically within an overall holism. Examples are the faculties of Thought, Emotion, Will / Volition, as well as life-supporting functions, and in more religious or esoteric contexts an afterlife entity and perhaps a soul-guide. In this view, these parts are subsidiary to the whole: “A person has a soul,” rather than “A soul has personhood.”
This approach started in a systematic way in the West, as far as I’m aware, with the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, and has influenced the development of soul ideas in philosophical and religious streams of thought up to the present day. The modern word ‘psychology’ meaning ‘science of the soul’, describes a field of study based on these premises, though their focus is more on the ‘Self’ in place of the ‘Soul.’ Modern Heathen thinkers have developed this approach further in very useful ways, which can support various methods of spiritual and esoteric practice within a Heathen context.
My study of Heathen soul lore over the past several decades has led me to take a different perspective on defining what a soul is, one which is perhaps more ‘primitive’ from a modern perspective, especially a materialist one. Part of the reason I have taken a different approach is because I began this whole enterprise by searching for linguistic and other evidence of shamanistic beliefs and practices in Heathen Anglo-Saxon England. I found some interesting words, charms, and references, and published some of my results in An Anglo-Saxon Charm Against a Dwarf: Shapeshifting, Soul Theft, and Shamanic Healing, available on this website. But it made me realize this: I couldn’t pursue this path any further until I understood more of their beliefs about souls and spirits.
The entire focus and belief-system of any kind of shamanism depends on a deep, culture-based understanding of souls and spirits, because these are the ‘basic units’, if you will, of what a shaman works with. Shamans make use of spirits, and / or are used by them, for healing, cursing and bewitching, and they work upon the souls of others, while strengthening their own soul-capabilities and protecting their own souls against the stresses and strains of such work. Souls and spirits are the basic material of shamanistic activity.
Without an understanding of a given culture’s beliefs about souls and spirits, one cannot understand that culture’s involvement with any kind of spirit work: shamanism, spiritual healing, religious practices, priestly work, afterlife beliefs, necromancy, etc. So I put my exploration of traces of Anglo-Saxon shamanism on pause, while I explored for traces of Heathen beliefs about the soul. I figured I’d spend a few months on that, then get back to the shamanism. Almost twenty years after publishing the first article in my “Heathen soul lore” series, I’m still working hard on this, and have a great deal more in the pipeline! After taking the first steps in this direction, an amazing and inspiring spiritual vista began to open up before me, which I try to share through my writing, and expect to explore with wonder for the rest of my life.
One Soul per Person, or More?
Coming toward the question of ‘what is a soul’ from the direction of shamanism rather than from the direction of formal philosophy, monotheistic religion, or modern psychology, leads to a different kind of understanding, in my experience. In this view, souls are actual beings in their own right, not simply one soul with several dependent parts: here, a soul has personhood. In contrast to what I am calling the ‘psychological theory of souls,’ where we have one soul comprised of several dependent parts, I take an approach that I call the ‘existential theory of souls’, meaning that humans are comprised of several distinct souls that exist in their own right, interacting with each other and the body to form a living person. Hence, “souls take on personhood,” rather than “a person has a soul.”
While they interact to form a living person, linked with a physical body in Midgard, distinct souls each have their own nature, their own abilities, behavior, functions, afterlife fate. Some of them are capable of independent action, such as giving us advice, knowledge, premonitions of things our everyday mind does not know. These more independent souls can sometimes exit from the living body and act independently, or can be extracted from the living body by malicious magic, as is told in folklore of Germanic (and most other) lands, and as I explore in my articles. Some of the souls have active, independent afterlives and before-lives, as well.
I, and most other modern Heathens, are often critical of depending too heavily on ‘functional’ definitions of our Deities, and of other pantheons as well: the ‘department store’ idea of having ‘a God of this’ and ‘a Goddess of that’, where the main trick of religious practice is to figure out the ‘right’ Deity for one’s petitions. We consider our Deities to be complex, multifaceted beings, highly developed individuals, not neatly-packaged ‘functions’, and pursue our relations with them based on this understanding. I take the same attitude towards our full-souls, versus soul-parts. The idea that we have ‘a (single) soul-part for thinking’, ‘a part for emoting’, ‘a part for remembering’, and so forth, doesn’t sit with my understanding of our souls. Like the Deities, I think our souls are individual beings who have their own capacities or ‘parts’, with a lot of overlap and interconnection with each other. For both Deities and souls (and people, too), the important thing is to work on our understanding of, and relationships with, each of them as individuals, rather than focusing on some tightly-structured system of categorization.
Based on many years of reading anthropological and comparative religious studies, I would say that belief systems positing that humans have more than one soul are far more common than belief-systems positing only one soul. Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, archaic Greek religion, and many past and present traditional, animistic, and tribal religions (including, in my understanding, historical Heathen beliefs) are examples, ranging from simple binary or ternary soul-concepts to very complex understandings of multiple layered and interwoven souls.
Even in Christianity, there is linguistic usage that differentiates ‘soul’ versus ‘spirit’, although confusingly people are considered to have only a single soul. This goes back to the founding texts from which the Christian version of the Bible was derived, written in Hebrew and Greek and then translated into Latin, which differentiated between words for souls in those languages (ruach, nefesh, and neshama in Hebrew, pneuma versus psyche in Greek, spiritus versus anima in Latin). Though the idea that we have more than one soul may seem strange to the modern Westerner (if indeed one believes in any soul at all), to a great many people around the world, past and present, this is the normal understanding. I argue that this is true about the ancient beliefs of Germanic-speaking Heathen tribes, as well.
Defining a Soul
Here are the criteria I use to define what a soul is.
1) It confers life by its presence with the body, and its departure is synonymous with physical death. The souls which fit this definition I call the Life-Souls.
Or, conversely,
2) It is capable of leaving and returning to the living body as an active metaphysical entity, either intentionally or inadvertently (for example during sleep and dreaming, or the result of shock or trauma). It may also be removed from the body by hostile supernatural or magical acts, which have deleterious but not immediately fatal results for the body. I call these the Daemon souls or Wander-Souls.
In addition:
3) Some souls have an independent afterlife and perhaps a before-life existence, and may reincarnate. Having an afterlife indicates that this is an existential soul-being, not simply a psychological part of a person. Some, but not all, of the Heathen souls I’ve identified have this characteristic.
There is a partial exception: the Sefa, which has many soul-like characteristics but does not fit into any of these criteria. I think that Sefa comes into being through the interaction and synergy of all our other souls together, as I discuss in more detail in my article on this website: The Arising of the Self.
In order to identify specifically Heathen souls according to these criteria, I require that the word for each soul is present in all of the old Germanic languages that I’ve examined throughout this study, namely Old Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Old High German, and Gothic. The selection of these languages is based on the availability of useful textual materials, and fortunately they represent the major branches of the old Germanic languages: Northern (Norse), Western (Saxon branches), Southern (Old High German), and Eastern (Gothic). The meanings of the soul-words may not be identical among these languages, but they need to be very close in meaning in order to qualify for my selection. I’ve established this not simply through looking up the words in modern dictionaries, but by reading old texts in all these languages in order to understand the soul-words in their original contexts.
The one exception to this requirement that the soul-words must exist in all the languages is the actual word ‘soul’ itself, or rather, its ancestors: Saiwalo, Saiwala, Seola, Siole, Sele, Sawol, Sawl, etc. This word is present, with the same meaning of an afterlife being, a ‘shade’, in all the ancient and modern Germanic languages except for Old Norse, which borrowed the word Sal from Anglo-Saxon during the conversion to Christianity. In my articles about the Saiwalo soul I discuss this matter further.
In addition to these ‘full-souls’ there are faculties and capabilities, or ‘soul-parts’, within humans which were certainly recognized and valued by ancient Heathens, and were considered so powerful that they were sometimes poetically personified. Among these are the Will, Heart, Thought, and many others. These are the psychological qualities of a person, the subjects that are considered when using the psychological theory of the soul.
Often in the old literature, these qualities are used as poetic synonyms for the souls, to enrich the vocabulary and imagery of the poem. For example, the Heart and the Hugr soul are very closely connected, as I show in my articles about the Hugr, so that Heart and Breast are often used as poetic variants for the Hugr soul. The faculty of Thought is often treated as being synonymous with the Hugr, as well, though Hugr has meanings that extend well beyond ‘Thought’ and show Hugr’s true ‘personhood’ rather than Hugr being a single faculty such as ‘Thought.’
In my understanding of soul lore, these faculties, capabilities and qualities all belong to various of the full-souls themselves. For example, most of the souls have a Will of their own, with the Mod and Hugr souls being particularly powerful in this respect. Most of the souls are capable of deep Thought and other mental and emotional activities, and have their own residence or foothold within our body or certain body parts or actions, which can be used synonymously for the soul, as I mentioned with Heart and Hugr. Another example of this is the very close connection between our Breath and the Ahma soul, such that the breath and the soul-word (Ahma, Ond, Aand, Athom, Aethm, Atem, etc.) can be used synonymously. All of these matters are discussed in more detail in individual articles about each of the souls.
A Brief Summary of Each Soul
In my choice of which language to use to give a formal name to each soul, I’ve chosen words from different Germanic languages based on these considerations: (1) ease of pronunciation for modern English-speakers; (2) avoiding confusion with other similar but unrelated English words (for example, the Anglo-Saxon soul-word ‘feorh’ is easily confused with English ‘fear’); (3) avoiding words which may be interpreted in different ways by modern Heathens, such as “Ond”; and (4) based on which language encompasses the broadest understanding of each soul.
Please refer to the articles and Study Guides that I’ve written about each of the souls for in-depth discussions as well as all relevant references, sources, and reasoning that I use to reach my conclusions. There is more about each of the souls in “Esoteric Affinities of the Heathen Souls.”
I must emphasize that these summaries reflect my own understanding, which is based on ancient sources and modern scholarship, but goes beyond these into my own interpretations. This is intended to enrich and inspire modern Heathen spiritual practice, rooted in ancient beliefs but living and growing in today’s world.
I The Life-Souls
Ferah (FAIR-ah)
(Feorh, Ferhth, Fjor, Fairhw, Ferh, Ferch, Verch. ‘Ferah’ is the Old Saxon word.) This is a very ancient word, going back to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word *perku, meaning ‘life-soul’ or animating principle. It is closely connected with PIE words for ‘chest / breast’, for oak, pine, fir, and other trees, for earth and mountains. It’s directly related to the name of the PIE Thunder-God *Perkwunos and with the verb ‘to strike’. The Norse deity-names Fjorgyn and Fjorgynn, and a plural Norse word for ‘Gods’, fjarg, are all descendants of these words. Ferah is a vitalizing Life-soul not only in humans, but in animals, trees, and other living entities as well. A lovely Anglo-Saxon word is feorh-cynn, ‘the kindred of the living, of those who share the Ferah soul’. As I understand it, Ferah was the soul enclosed within the Trees that were transformed into the mythical first humans, Ask and Embla. The Tree-Ferahs were first released from the trees by Thor’s mighty Hammer-strike, then given the gifts of breath, spirit, wode, the human body-shape and its abilities, by Odin and his brothers as they shaped the mythical first humans.
Ferah is a vitalizing, life-giving substance that fills us during life, and mysteriously leaves at death. Ferah has personal characteristics such as wisdom, piety, emotions and thoughts, and connects us with the great Powers of Nature, Earth and Sky. It is perceptive, aware and responsive to everything in our environment, and is the locus of our bodily sensations and reactions to events around us. Our individual Ferah comes into being during conception as egg and sperm unite in a lightning-flash of power and set the forces of life into action, followed in due time by the thunder of the heartbeat and the lightning-power of all our body’s bioelectrical functions. (See “Born of Trees and Thunder: The Ferah Soul”, and the Study Guide for Ferah.)
Ahma
(Ond, Aand, Aethm, Athom, Ethma, Atum, Atem, Adem. ‘Ahma’ is the Gothic word.) All of these words go back to Proto-Indo-European words for both ‘breath’ and ‘spirit,’ and are linguistically related to the Hindu Atman, the highest, most refined soul in Hindu belief. In the Germanic languages, these words applied to the indwelling human spirit, to spirit-entities such as ghosts and devils, and in Norse they also applied to otherworldly beings such as dwarves and wights. The Christian Holy Spirit was called by variations of this word in the different languages, such as Ahmeins Weihis in Gothic and Hellig Aand in modern Norwegian. Ahma is our ‘spirit’ and is the channel for divine gifts of inspiration and the highest mental abilities such as abstract thought and inspired creativity. It is more connected with the divine realms and cosmic powers, and less concerned with earthly, mundane matters than most of our other souls. (See “Ond, Ahma, Ghost and Breath: Basic Meanings”; “Ghost Rider: Athom, Ghost and Wode in Action”; and the Study Guide for Ahma and Ghost.)
Ghost
(Gast, Gest, Geist, Keist. ‘Ghost’ is the modern English form of the old Germanic word.) Some of the old Germanic languages (Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, Old Saxon, Old High German) split the concept of Ahma into two, with the Ahma-related words applying primarily to ‘breath’ (including the Divine Breath), and another word ‘gast, Geist, etc.’ applying more to spirits, though there was some parallel usage. In these languages Ghost-words applied to the inner spirit of a person, to spirit-beings such as ghosts, and to physical but otherworldly, supernatural beings such as dragons, wights, and monsters (e.g. Grendel, called an ‘ellor-gast’, an alien spirit, in Anglo-Saxon, even though he was a physical being). In these languages, the Christian Holy Spirit was called Holy Ghost, Helag Gest, Heilig Geist, etc.
In my understanding, our Ghost and Ahma souls are intimately related in this way: Ahma is the divine breath, the unchanging and formless material of spirit, while Ghost is Ahma’s hama or soul-skin, a pod that shapes and encloses our formless Ahma into a personal being with its own character: our Ghost. While, as I see it, Ahma is united with the impersonal, undifferentiated divine power out of which everything flows, Ghost interacts with personal Deities and with the mundane world of Midgard on a person-to-person level, while still accessing the powers of our Ahma spirit.
Though the Ghost is a Life-soul, conferring life through the breath, it can also act as a Wander-Soul through temporary flight from the body during trance, dreams, coma, and near-death experiences, while remaining linked to the body through slow, deep breathing. As we inhale our first breath when we are born, our Ahma enclosed within our Ghost rides in upon our breath and takes root within us. After death, when we ‘give up the Ghost’, our Ghost may join our closest Deities in their God-Homes. If it can’t fully let go of earthly life, it may wander as a haunt on the edges of Midgard. If our Ghost during life does not feel attached to any Deities nor drawn to haunt Midgard, then according to my understanding, after death it will likely dissolve its shape and revert to the undifferentiated Ahma state. (See “Ond, Ahma, Ghost and Breath: Basic Meanings”; “Ghost Rider: Athom, Ghost and Wode in Action”; and the Study Guide for Ahma and Ghost.)
Hama (rhymes with ‘Mama’)
This word is the same in all the Germanic languages, and means ‘a covering’. Hama is our human shape, a gift of the Gods: a shaped soul-energy which first comes to reside in the womb and placenta where a newly-conceived child lies. It holds the pattern of our physical body, and guides its formation during our growth in the womb. Hama also provides the pattern which guides the energies that heal and restore our body after injury or illness. The hamingja (ha-ming-ya) is a spirit of luck which is attached to the structures of the womb (placenta, caul, afterbirth), is born with us, and whether weak or strong, accompanies us during life and governs our luck.
In my understanding, Hama consists of three parts, given to Ask and Embla when humans were first formed from trees. La or Lo is the spiritual energy of the blood which invigorates our body and its actions. Laeti refers to our ability to take physical action, to speak, and to engage in social behavior. Litr is our unique physical appearance, including the light of our souls shining through our body and our face, our countenance. Our Lichama is our living body, the combination of our Lich, our physical body, plus our Hama soul which governs the body. After death the Hama decomposes along with the Lich, releasing into the ambient energy of life, unless, as is told in chilling folk-tales, it re-animates its body to become a Draugr, an animated corpse. (See: “The Shape of Being Human: The Hama Soul” ; “Hel-Dweller” ; “The Kindly Gods Go Wandering” ; “Disir, Hama and Hugr as Healing Partners” ; and the Study Guide for Hama.)
Aldr (ahl-der)
(Ealdor, Eldi, Alds. Aldr is the Old Norse term.) Aldr stems from the root *al and ‘alan’, meaning ‘to nourish.’ It is a life-soul which nourishes our Hama and our living body, our Lichama, and nurtures it over many years to reach old age. The word ‘old’ is derived from this root, as are words for life-span and for an age of time. A word for ‘killer’ in Anglo-Saxon was ‘ealdor-bana’ or Aldr-bane; likewise there is the Old Norse phrase for killers, ‘aldrs synjudhu’, meaning ‘Aldr-snatchers’, showing that Aldr is necessary to maintain life.
As the Hama shapes and empowers our physical body and life in space, Aldr governs our ‘body and life in time’. It is shaped and given to us by the Norns when we are born, drawn from the Well of Wyrd, and is linked with our orlog and wyrd, the patterns that shape and are shaped by our life-events. Aldr triggers time-dependent physical changes such as puberty and menopause, and governs the timing of events related to our orlog throughout our lifetime.
During life it weaves its own hama or soul-skin, like a cloak or a cocoon, made up of all the deeds and events of our lives. This soul-skin is called our Werold (‘man-age’): it is our own personal world, made up of our cumulative experiences and deeds over our whole lifetime. At the end of our life, our Aldr returns to the Norns and the Deities, seated in judgement around the Well of Wyrd, for their acknowledgement, judgement and blessing on the Werold we have woven with our lives. Then Aldr sinks down and dissolves into the Well of Wyrd whence it came, while the Werold-cloak it wove during life spreads out to become one more layer of orlog floating in the Well. (See “Aldr and Orlay: Weaving a World”; “Disir, Hama and Hugr as Healing Partners”; “Images of Orlay” ; and the Study Guide for Aldr.)
Saiwalo (SIGH-wa-low)
(Saiwala, Seola, Siola, Sawol, Seula, Sele, Sela, Sal. Saiwalo is the Proto-Germanic word.) This is the word that descended to become modern English ‘soul’, with similar words in all the other modern Germanic languages. In Heathen times Saiwalo was understood to be the soul which goes to Hel after death, where it continues existing as the ‘shade’. Unlike most of the other souls, during life Saiwalo has little involvement in everyday Midgard activities, except for its role as a life-soul which keeps the body alive by its presence. When Saiwalo departs, the body is ‘sawol-leas’, soulless and dead.
When Christian missionaries began their work of translating Christian teachings into the Germanic languages, preaching that ‘the soul’ must be saved by Christ or else end up in a place of eternal torment and damnation, it was clear to them that Saiwalo and Hel were the closest match among the Heathen soul-word candidates for these roles, based on what was already believed about Saiwalo as an afterlife soul going to a place called ‘Hel’.
The word-root of ‘Hel’ means ‘hidden, concealed’; Heathen Hel was not seen as a place specifically for punishment. Heathen Hel is the Hidden Land, told of in endless myths, folktales, fairy tales, fantasies, experienced in dreams and trance-work. It contains sources of benevolence, reunion, rootedness, distress, emptiness, neediness, riches, power, beauty, mystery, arcane knowledge. Its denizens are the Saiwalo souls who shape their surroundings through their powers of imaging and their experiences during life.
The Christian missionaries chose one soul, out of the multiplicity of Heathen choices, to call ‘the one and only soul’, destined for heaven or hell according to Christian rules. Ironically, this meant that the words for all the other souls recognized by Heathen belief either dropped out of the various Germanic languages entirely, or remained but changed their meanings, or else were eventually subsumed as ‘parts’ of what was once the Saiwalo soul and then became “The (only) Soul”. As I show throughout my Heathen Soul Lore series, the other souls were definitely not seen as ‘parts’ of Saiwalo during Heathen times. (See “Hel-Dweller” ; “The Soul and the Sea” ; The Alchemy of Hel series; “What Happened to Heathen Saiwalo-Soul?” and “Saiwalo-Dwimor and the Sea of Images.”)
II The Daemon Souls or Wander-Souls
Hugr (Who-gr)
(Hugi, Hyge, Hugs, Hu. Hugr is the Old Norse word). Hugr is very closely related to the abilities and capacities of both the intellect and the heart. It resides around the heart where, under the influence of strong emotion or the intentional raising of occult power, it wells up, swells, and wallows within the breast until it bursts out as emotional expression or as magical power. Hugr is the soul which can most easily leave our physical body on its own errands, as is told in Norse folklore up until recent times, and can appear as our Doppelganger or in animal form at a distance from the body.
Hugr is associated particularly with domains of Thought that help us deal with everyday challenges of social and practical life, as opposed to the very abstract kinds of Thought associated with Ahma and Ghost. Hugr is a soul within us who loves, who has desires and longings, envy and cravings, intentions, strong emotions and subtle thoughts. It is fully embedded in and focused on our life in Midgard, and serves as our ‘inner warder,’ subtly helping us resist social pressures, deception and manipulation by other people. However, it may engage in manipulation of other people itself, if not restrained.
After death it will sooner or later reincarnate, but a mature and seasoned afterlife Hugr may also spend time as an ancestral spirit, a Dis (female) or Alf (male) of our physical or spiritual line who offers guidance, rede and wisdom from the spirit-world to the living. An angry, envious, hateful or vengeful Hugr after death may become an afflicting spirit, given many names in folklore such as Hag, Murk-Elf, etc. It will seek to cause illness, nightmares, ill luck, accidents, elf-shot, and other such misfortunes for the living. (See “Hunting the Wild Hugr” ; “Who Is Hugr?” ; “Disir, Hama and Hugr as Healing Partners” ; “The Occult Activities of the Hugr, Parts I and II” ; “The Alchemy of Hel, Part VI” ; and Study Guides pertaining to Hugr.)
Mod (mode)
(Modhr, Moths, Mot, Muat, Muot, Moet, Mut, Mood, Mo. Mod is the word in Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon.) Mod and Hugr souls have a great deal in common. Both of them are sources of strong emotion, courage, determination, strategic and practical thinking. Both of them can serve as inner rede-givers, offering insights and knowledge not available to our conscious minds. Both are involved with our intentions that lead to actions. Both can flood us with negative emotions such as rage, envy, or cruelty, or throw us into moods and tempers, good or bad. The two of them provide a great deal of what we experience as ‘character’ and ‘personality’ within ourselves and others.
Mod is especially associated with strength of body, mind and will-power, and is a characteristic of Thor, his sons Magni (Might) and Modi (Mod-y), and his daughter Thrud (Strength). Mod was also the word used to translate Latin ‘virtus’ or ‘virtue’, in the sense of possessing some out-of-the-ordinary power, like the healing power of herbs, or the power in a magical item. Even a good beer was considered to have Mod-power, its own virtue or special quality of flavor and strength. Thunder-clouds, mighty ocean waves, uncastrated male animals like stallions, bulls and rams, and the mighty aurochs mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon rune-poem for Ur: all of these were also called Mod.
Mod does not willingly leave the body as Hugr and Ghost can do, but it can be weakened or removed from the body of humans or animals through the agency of illness, or magical or supernatural means. Many medieval spells sought to restore Mod to an ill, lethargic, weak or depressed person or domestic animal by ousting the wight, witch or sorcerer that was afflicting their Mod-power.
There’s reason to believe (as I discuss in “Dances with Daemons”) that Mod originates as a daemon, an elemental spirit of nature, an expression of natural power, and that some of these elemental spirits, ages ago, began to associate more and more closely with humans, animals, Deities, and wights. Gradually they became more integrated with their hosts, just as on the physical level micro-organisms like viruses and bacteria gradually integrated with our microbiome and even our genome, and during evolution changed our nature to a degree. In humans, through the influence of our other souls, over evolutionary time our inner Mod became more human-like, more integral to our ‘soular-system’, while still bearing within itself the power and wildness of its elemental roots. (See “Dances with Daemons: The Mod Soul Part I”, and “Esoteric Affinities of the Heathen Souls,” as well as relevant Study Guides.)
Sefa (SAY-fah)
(Sefa, seofa, sebo, sefi. Sefa is the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon word.) This word descends from or is closely related to several words with these meanings: the ‘self’, the ability of the self to sense and perceive what is around it, and kinship and relationship. It is related to the name of the Norse Goddess Sjöfn, who promotes and protects love, affection, and relationships, and to the Goddess-name Sif, wife of Thor, whose name is related to ‘sib’ (sibling) and words for ‘relative, relationship’ in all the Germanic languages. In Old English, sibb meant ‘kinship, relationship, love, friendship, peace, happiness’. Proto-Germanic *sibja meant literally ‘one’s own’, a blood relation. Sib-related words indicating ‘relationship’ occur in all the old and modern Germanic languages.
The basic meaning I derive for Sefa is “our self, with its abilities to sense, notice, perceive and understand, and that which is connected to our self through relationship, love and affection.” Further meanings of this word are related to awareness, noticing, paying attention to, as well as soothing and quieting. These are all faculties of our Self that are needed to promote strong relationships between people who understand one another well, pay attention to and care for one another.
I associate the word ‘caring’ in all its meanings with Sefa, along with the perceptive insights that are gained from sincerely caring about others. A nutshell-meaning of Sefa, to me, is ‘the one who cares’ within ourselves, whether that caring is related to people or other beings or things, or to any kind of situation or idea that one may care about. This includes the meaning of ‘cares’ as ‘worries, sorrows, concerns,’ as well as the meaning of caring for someone or something, and caring about anything. Sefa is the energy and the link between our self and whatever we care about, whether concrete (like another person, or the environment) or abstract (like the ideas of justice, beauty, kindness, honor). Sefa is not a daemon-soul, but as it is closely linked with Hugr and Mod, I include it with these other two souls as a group. (See “Sefa: The Soul of Relationship”; “The Arising of the Self”; and the Study Guide “Sefa, Hugr, and Mod Together.”)
Associated Spirits
There are many fascinating accounts throughout the lore of Germanic lands and peoples, relating to wights and spirits which accompany some or all humans, and who are associated with peoples’ kinship lines, household, land, crops, crafts, magic, other activities of many kinds. They are a major source of the luck or ill-luck that affects human lives. Much has been written about them elsewhere, both by academic scholars and by practicing Heathens. Though I have written articles about wights and spirits (some posted on this site, others to come), this Heathen Soul Lore series is focused on our own souls, the ones that make up our ‘self’, rather than the study of spirits who are our associates but not part of our self.
This article replaces Heathen Full-Souls: The Big Picture, Heathen Soul Lore #1, that was published in Idunna: A Journal of Northern Tradition, #67, Spring 2006. Updated May 2021.