Heathen Souls in Action Series
Winifred Hodge Rose
This is an overview of certain aspects, abilities and affinities that the Heathen souls naturally have for esoteric and magical work. It is part of a new series, “Practicing Heathen Souls Lore,” to show examples of how the souls’ natures and abilities contribute to every aspect of our daily lives, both inner-world and outer-world lives. If we choose, we can develop and strengthen these soul-powers of ours in whatever directions interest us.
Some Heathens have little interest in esoteric or magical work, others have a great deal. Of those who do, some Heathens prefer to stick pretty strictly to traditional methods that have been gleaned from history and folklore of Germanic peoples. Other Heathens like to work with a combination of traditional Germanic methods plus esoteric and magical methods developed in more modern times. Our souls can work with either approach, or any other! Our souls are us: we can’t do anything without them. Whatever we do involves them. But the path of esoteric development we take will undoubtedly influence our souls. Some aspects of our souls will be strengthened, others may be less developed, depending on our esoteric activities as well as all our other activities.
We may want to make a conscious choice about which of our souls and their abilities we want to draw upon, develop, and strengthen, at any given period of time as we walk our chosen esoteric paths. It’s also very useful to have some understanding of how our souls can interact together, supporting or pulling against each other, balancing and counterbalancing each other. Whether one is focused more on magical or on spiritual esoteric development, our souls will play the primary role in our activities. It’s good to have some ideas about where the strengths of each of them lie.
In offering some thoughts in this direction, I include aspects of the esoteric natures of the Heathen souls that go outside the boundaries of what Heathen traditionalists would choose to work with, for example, Elemental affinities. Nobody has to accept or follow possibilities that are not consistent with their chosen approaches! And the fact that Heathen souls can stretch beyond any given set of esoteric practices does not mean that we must choose to do it that way. Our choice of path does affect us, whatever way we go, and it’s good to have a full understanding of that so we can make the choices that lead us the way we really want to go.
Magic is a multifaceted phenomenon and not easy to define or confine. I shall not try to do so here! It consists of methodologies or approaches, for example rune-work, ritual magic, spaecraft, galdr, or shamanistic practices. It also involves various materials and media, such as herbs and other natural substances, rune-staves, wands and gand-staves, amulets and talismans, and the like. Finally, magic is directed toward many different aims or goals, including healing, energy work, warding, communication with various disembodied beings, esoteric development and evolution of one’s self and Being, influencing events and luck, divination, and many more, including manipulative, aggressive, unethical and harmful magic.
Our souls, quite naturally, are potentially very much involved in magic as well as everything else we do, since we are comprised of our souls and body, their interactions and the resulting emergent properties. Our souls are individual beings, however, which in some ways blend in and closely interact with each other, and in other ways are quite distinct and separate. Each has its own character, abilities and nature, and these things affect how each soul involves itself in whatever esoteric or magical undertakings we might engage in.
One area where all the souls are potentially involved is esoteric healing, where any of the souls may need to be the healer, the subject of the healing, or both. The health, or lack thereof, of our souls and their interrelationships will inevitably affect every aspect of our life. For a depiction of how old Norwegian spells were used to connect with deities for protection and healing, see my article: “The Kindly Gods Go Wandering.”
In addition, of course, each of us is an individual with our own personal history and characteristics, which influence and are influenced by our own souls. Thus, my outlines here of magical and esoteric abilities of the souls might, or might not, conform exactly to your own experiences and perceptions of your souls.
Along these lines, you will notice that I supply suggestions for Elemental correspondences for each of the souls, based on their general nature. You may find some of your own souls have stronger correlation with a different Element than I list. As a personal example: the Aldr soul, which has much to do with our experience of Time, in general is strongly attuned to Water and Earth because of its source in the Well and its focus on earthly and bodily life in Midgard. Yet because of experiences in my own life, I sense the passage of time and the resonances of my Aldr soul best, when I am outdoors in blowing wind that contains some earthy substances—dust, leaves—and is singing eerily through branches, rock formations, power lines, ancient buildings or ruins. So for me, Aldr is Air and Earth in my usual experience of it, and I only tune in to the Water connection when I am specifically working with the Well.
In this article I do not provide much in the way of references, linguistic analyses, evidence from the lore, lines of reasoning, and so forth, to explain my conclusions about the nature of each of our Souls. Articles providing this information are posted on this website, and go into much more depth about each of the souls. Here I am confining myself to some conclusions concerning the souls’ natures, along with personal thoughts about the types of esoteric undertakings that each soul seems most involved with and best suited for, to the extent that I have any familiarity with these realms of esoteric endeavor. I do expand the possible abilities of the souls into areas that purist Heathen esoteric practitioners would not find of interest, but there is also plenty here that the most traditionally Heathen-focused practitioner can work with.
The Life-Souls
The Heathen Souls fall into two basic categories; the first is the Life-Souls. These are souls whose presence with the body is essential for physical life. When these souls leave the body, death occurs within moments. The Life-Souls are: Ferah, Ahma, Hama, Aldr, Saiwalo, and Ghost. However, Ghost holds an intermediate position between the Life-Souls and the second category, the Daemon Souls or Wander-Souls. Ghost can leave the living body and act at a distance, leaving the body in a deep trance, coma, or stupor, as long as it is tied to the body by Athom / Ond, the sacred breath of life. If the cord of breath is broken, death occurs, so Ghost is a Life-Soul. Ghost is not a Daemon soul, which I will explain further below, but it can wander far from the living body as a Daemon soul can.
Most of the Life-Souls were originally shaped or influenced by the Holy Ones, who also preside over the joining of these souls with our body. Two of them, however, I place in a category I call the Cosmic Life-Souls, arising on their own from natural cosmogonic processes rather than through the involvement of deities: these are Ahma and Saiwalo. Below, I discuss each of the Life-Souls.
Ferah
(Feorh, Ferhth, Fjor, Fair, Ferh, Ferch, Verch)
Our Ferah soul is born of trees and thunder, arising from the deities and powers of Earth, Mountains, Storm, Lightning, Thunder, Sky, Trees, and Nature generally. It is the life-force within living beings and the kinship this creates among them, recognized in the term ‘feorh-cynn’ meaning ‘kindred of living beings,’ ‘feorh-bera’ = ‘living person, bearer of the life-soul,’ and words like ‘firihi, firi-barn’ meaning ‘the folk, child of the folk.’ But Ferah is more than simply vitality. Ferah has substance and being of its own; it ‘fills’ people during life, and ‘falls’ from them at death. Ferah is a soul-being, not simply a form of vital energy.
The human Ferah soul was born from the fire of lightning striking trees, releasing and reshaping tree-souls into human souls. This is Thunder-God and Earth-Goddess interacting, negative and positive poles of power reaching from Earth to Sky and back, and within the middle of that mighty flow the Ferah is shaped and given being. Our Ferah soul is energetically connected to the deities and to the powers of Nature. It forms the foundation for a natural Heathen piety, an instinctive understanding of and attunement with the Holy Ones, especially those most closely related to Earth and Storm. Its substance forms the gift that is given in holy sacrifice of living beings, whether that involves sacred flame, food, plants, animals, humans, or deeds and actions.
Our Ferah soul joins with the body at the very moment of conception, the spark of life lit when egg and sperm merge. It uses its connection with lightning / living electricity to spark the functioning of the heart and nervous system in the babe within the womb, and its electromagnetic force to help the Hama soul shape the new body into human form.
Ferah’s magical strengths are far-reaching, covering many natural phenomena. They include:
Working with lightning, bioelectricity and electromagnetism.
Working with thunder and with the drums and rhythmical stamping and clapping that mimic thunder. Group chanting or galdoring for magical energy: deep thunderous chanting by the men, high intense flickering-lightning chanting by the women.
Weather-working.
Strengthening the life-force within living beings. The sparking of life, initiating the life-force through fertility magic, and other forms of magic focused on conception and initiation.
Attuning to trees, herbs and plants, and using them in magic, healing, rune-work, alchemy, spagyrics and essences.
Working with Thor’s energy-raising and life-giving powers (think of him swinging his Hammer over his slaughtered goats, bringing them back to life), and with the life-giving and sustaining power of Mother Earth under all her names.
Working with the Elements of Fire and Earth, and with rocks, minerals, mountains and other land-forms.
Strengthening our Heathen piety, our attunement with the Holy Ones, with Nature, and with the flows and rhythms of natural life. With its natural piety and connection with God-forces, Ferah is a good soul to attune with, in order to pursue Theurgic workings.
Ferah itself was transformed from one kind of soul-energy and form (trees) into another (humans), so it is a powerful soul to attune to for all our efforts at transformation, within ourselves and outside ourselves.
Ferah is attuned to Fire and Earth.
Further reading:
https://heathensoullore.net/born-of-trees-and-thunder-the-ferah-soul/
https://heathensoullore.net/study-guide-2-exploring-your-ferah-soul/
Ahma
(Aethm, Ond, Aand, Atum, Athom, Atem, Adem)
Ahma / Ond is the other Heathen Soul, besides Ferah, whose word roots go directly back to Proto-Indo-European. In this case, the ancient words apply to the breath, both the physical breath and the divine breath of the Spirit. These words are related to the Hindu Atman, the highest and holiest soul within Hindu belief. There is no way of knowing whether the ancient Germanic peoples held a truly abstract belief about any soul, as opposed to more concrete conceptions like ghosts and other spirits that take on a perceptible shape and act in ways that are comprehensible by living humans. The ancient Germanic words Ahma, Aethm, Ond, etc. were used to refer to ghostly and otherworldly spirit beings, to the breath of life, and were used to translate the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit. If the Germanic peoples did hold a conception of a ‘high’, abstract soul, that would be Ahma / Ond, the holy breath of inspiration that ties the souls to bodily life.
Whatever the situation in the past, however, I would say that the concept of a high, abstract, detached-from-daily-Midgard-life soul is part of the modern landscape of belief, including the belief structure of some types of modern magical practice. This is the divine breath within us, detached from personality, temperament and earthly motivations and considerations, the pure essence of our spiritual being. This is Ahma / Ond, our Spirit, and pure Consciousness.
In my understanding, Ahma arises from the mist that fills Ginnungagap, resulting from the meeting of Fire and Ice in the middle of the Gap, forming a temperate energy-environment conducive to the generation of living spirits. This is its true home, and the home of all similar spiritual essences including the deities, the spiritual powers of the celestial bodies, and powers of Nature that develop on and within these bodies. In the misty home of Ahma, however, there is, as yet, little differentiation and personification of any of these spirits.
Because it is so abstract and detached, I do not see a large role for the Ahma soul in many of the kinds of magic that are directed toward concrete results in Midgard. Rather, Ahma is a soul through which to experience mystical communion: with the Ground of Being, the Source of All, (which I perceive as Ginnungagap and as a sacred conception of Niflheim or Mist-Home), and with the Ahma souls of deities, humans, and other spiritual beings. One tunes into pure Ahma mostly by Being, rather than by Doing.
There are some specific areas of magic where Ahma does play a larger role, however. One is in the use of astrology. Ahma is a cosmic soul, a beyond-Earth soul, and can readily attune to the patterns and flows of energy that are mediated to Earth through celestial bodies and astronomical sectors. Both in the practice of astrology, and in the use of astrology to empower a talisman or determine the proper timing for other forms of magic, Ahma provides a valuable channel of knowledge.
The other area where I see Ahma undertaking direct involvement is in the process of emanation. The Neoplatonic concept of emanation makes a lot of sense to me, in a general way, though I perceive it through a different–Heathen–set of symbols and myths. This is the process as I perceive it, in symbolic / mythic terms. The extreme polarities of Fire and Ice together generate a field of potential energy, which is Ginnungagap. The energy within Ginnungagap first emanates as a cloud of mist, arising from the meeting of Ice and Fire. In the center of Ginnungagap, the colliding forces of Fire and Ice cause an energetic swirling of the mist, churning itself into Hvergelmir, the Roaring Cauldron, from which arises the energy that forms the Worlds. The Elivagar, the great mythic ‘rivers’ of pure energy, flow out from Hvergelmir. Like physical rivers, they form the turbulent boundaries between the Worlds, and also ‘water’ the Worlds with ‘flavors’ of living energy characteristic to each of the Elivagar.
As the mist rises from Ginnungagap and Hvergelmir, it coalesces into Niflheim or Mist-Home, which I perceive as the realm of proto-being, the quantum realm from which the manifest cosmos arises. As the mist continues to rise above Niflheim and coalesces more firmly, it shapes the world of Hel, which I perceive as the Womb of Souls. This is where the soul-stuff of Niflheim and the quantum realm begins to form into individual soul beings, the Saiwalo souls, which reach up into the Midgard plane during life, and then die back into Hel. It is also a place where the ‘souls’ of physical objects, and even some of the ‘shadows and textures’ of events and patterns begin, that eventually are ‘born into’ Midgard and play out in the physical and social worlds where humans and other embodied spirits live and act. (Hel is not the only world that gives rise to such patterns, however.)
Above Hel is Midgard. Ahma permeates the air of Midgard, infusing it with the power of sacred Being and nourishing all who breathe it. It spreads out toward the whole cosmos and all the other Worlds of the Tree, suffusing them as mist, air, ether, subtle energy, permeated with its power of sacred Being.
If one undertakes to influence this process of emanation through magical means, then depending on where in the process one wants to direct the influence, an understanding of and attunement with the Ahma soul could be necessary.
In terms of working with the Elements, Ahma is most attuned to Air.
Further reading:
https://heathensoullore.net/ond-ahma-ghost-and-breath-basic-meanings/
https://heathensoullore.net/study-guide-3-exploring-your-ahma-and-ghost-souls/
Ghost and Wode
(Aand, Ond, Gest, Gast, Geist, Odhr)
The Ghost soul is so closely related to the Ahma soul that I perceive it to be Ahma’s hama, its soul-skin or tangible shape that forms a container for Ahma and thus shapes its nature, changing it from more-abstract to more-concrete. Here is my picture of what this looks like. Ahma is an amorphous mist, without personal characteristics; a state of pure Being. Ghost is like a pod or a sack, floating within the mist, which contains part of the mist within a breathable membrane. This pod, and the mist within it, is now a being with boundaries and characteristics, a shape and a consciousness which floats within Ahma and exchanges energy with it through its permeable membrane. This exchange of energy between Ghost and Ahma is the process known as breathing. As our Ghost breathes Ahma in and out of itself, our physical body mimics this action by breathing physical air. Breath and breathing, the sacred breath of Athom or Ond, keeps our body connected with Ghost, and Ghost connected with Ahma; thus all are held within Life.
Odin and the other Holy Ones preside over the entrance of the Ghost into each living body, which occurs when a newborn child takes its first breath and the newly-shaped Ghost rides in upon it, along with its gifts of consciousness and inspiration.
This offers an example for a Ghost-working, a mighty work to take place during childbirth, and by extension to help the birth of some great creative or other effort at a significant time of our life. I will give this example here based on actual childbirth, but it can be modified to suit esoteric endeavors and ordeals of a similar nature.
Breathing with power and depth is an essential practice for the mother herself during natural childbirth, and the reasons for this are spiritual as well as physical. On the spiritual side, one of the things that is happening is the mother’s Ghost calling, through her powerful breathing, for the arrival of her child’s new Ghost. This occurs whether the mother is aware of it or not, though it is more powerful and magical if she is aware.
The excellent practice of the father breathing along with the mother during birthing brings his own Ghost into this great effort. He is breathing not only to support the mother during her mighty ordeal, but to call his child’s Ghost and support his child through the ordeal of birth as well. If both parents are fully aware of these spiritual realities, then the process of childbirth takes on an additional dimension of awesome magical power. Other people, relatives, helpers, partners, can also play this role, adding their own power and love.
And if for medical reasons the childbirth cannot be “natural,” it is just as important to be aware of the magical power of breathing, body and soul, and direct it appropriately under the given circumstances. Childbirth (with or without intentional magic) is a moment of great meaning not only for the kin of the babe, but for the Holy Ones and well-meaning ancestors as well, who preside with joy and power over the entrance of the new Ghost.
Of equal meaning to Gods, ancestors and living people is the moment when a dying person exhales the last breath and ‘gives up the Ghost,’ who then returns to the realm of the Holy Ones with whom it has formed relationships during life. As with childbirth, it is very meaningful to have someone who is close to the dying person breathing along with them at the close of life, the birth-time of the Ghost into the God-realms. This supports the dying person, and is a work of great love and opportunity for learning on the part of the Athom-helper / breath-helper. This is an area that offers fruitful opportunities for more Heathen spiritual development: the knowledge of how to guide forth dying and newly dead Heathens. (The application of Heathen Soul Lore to Heathen birth and death is another area I plan to develop in this series.)
It is clear from all of this that breath-work, or Athom / Ond work, is key to working and attuning with our Ghost soul. Athom work is used in all forms of meditation, whether pursued for its own sake, or as preparation for magical or mystical endeavors, and indeed for great physical endeavors as well. Breathing with a full understanding of the powers and nature of Ghost and Ahma, and thus entering into attunement with these souls, adds an ineffable pulse of power to any meditative intention.
Breathing helps us move into other magical states as well. Excited breathing resulting from dancing, singing, or other physical activities, enhanced by atmospheric effects such as firelight, drumming, music, ritual, sauna, or sacred smoke, can lead the Ghost into an ecstatic state where magical and esoteric actions come easily. Some kinds of shamans, berserkers, martial artists, performance artists, seers, and spirit-healers, for example, rely on the rising of Wode or Odhr to power their focused activity.
Wode or Odhr is the propensity of our Ghost soul to enter into a powerful ecstatic trance, creating a bridge between the human Ghost and the divine realms of power. This ability was a gift given by Odin’s brother at the same time that Odin gave Ond (spiritual consciousness and power), and it can be a double-edged sword. Well-developed and controlled, Wode is a sacred gift of the highest order, leading to brilliant intellectual, artistic, poetic and prophetic creativity, and amazing spirit-fueled physical prowess along with temporary resistance to the effects of injury for as long as the Wode-trance lasts. Uncontrolled Wode, on the other hand, can create conditions of rage, fury, paroxysms and fits, or all-out madness, temporary or permanent.
One of the key tools to ensure that Wode takes the former shape, enhancing inspiration and ability, rather than the latter shape leading to fury and madness, is training the Ghost in Athom-work (controlled breath-work) along with other forms of training, as well as coordinating our Ghost with other souls (especially the Hama) who can ground and counterbalance excessive or uncontrolled Wode.
One of the main ways that our Ghost participates in specifically magical activity is through the attainment of divinely inspired Wode, controlled and directed through appropriate spiritual, esoteric, magical and physical training and development. Ritual magic, shamanism (scinnlac, pronounced SHEEN-lock, is an Anglo-Saxon word that can be used for shamanistic work, see below), martial arts based in spiritual practice, and disciplined training in any of the performing arts, are examples of styles of constructive training for Ghost and Wode. Even without entering into a full state of Wode, the flow of inspiration from Ahma and the divine realms through our Ghost and into Midgard can be directed toward magical aims as well as toward any other worthy endeavor in our Midgard life.
Another way Ghost is involved with magic is its ability to travel far from the body into other realms, though this travel requires that the body be in a heavy trance, stupor, or unconscious. It requires a good deal of training to do this safely; in Nordic cultures this was known to be an ability of the great Finn shaman-magicians, of mysterious provenance and training. This is also what happens during near-death and out of body experiences that occur while unconscious.
Ghost can travel to the God-realms and into the depths of cosmogonic processes in this way, but an easier way for it to achieve this, rather than actually exiting the body with the high risk and unconsciousness involved, is for the Ghost to resonate very closely with the Ahma that it encloses as a soul-skin. When Ghost and Ahma are fully attuned, and our everyday mind / self is able to tune in with them, this is the experience of deep, transcendent meditation. One is then able to experience transcendent realms and deities, with full awareness and memory of the experience.
The Ghost soul is attuned to Air and Fire. When Ghost is in a state of Wode / Odhr, of divine inspiration and supernatural power, it is fully Fire, fed by Air in the form of Athom-work (breath-work), and carried upon the Air in its work.
Further reading:
https://heathensoullore.net/ghost-rider-athom-ghost-and-wode-in-action/
https://heathensoullore.net/study-guide-4-ghost-and-wode/
https://heathensoullore.net/a-blog-on-the-inner-ravens-of-our-ghost-soul/
Hama and Hamingja
(Lichama, Likhamo, Hiw)
Hama, the soul that creates our human shape, appearance, speech and behavior, is the third gift given to humans by Odin and his brothers. It consists of three parts: La, Laeti, and Litr. La is the flow of life-energy that powers and sustains the Hama soul and its creation, the Lichama. Lichama is the Hama-ensouled, living body as distinct from the Lic or Lich, the physical body separate from its Hama soul. La expresses its life-giving power especially through the warmth, flow, and vitality of the blood, and through the beauty and growth of the hair.
Laeti refers to behavior, to how we move, act, and conduct ourselves, and to our voice and ability for speech. Litr describes our appearance; not only our physical appearance but the way our character and our souls shine forth from our appearance, for those who can see or sense this. It’s like the difference between ‘face’ and ‘countenance’. ‘Face’ refers simply to the physical, whereas ‘countenance’ implies something more: a face full of character and spirit. This is also the distinction between the Lich or Lik, the physical body or the corpse, versus the Lichama, which is the living physical body emanating its aura of energy and spirit: Lich and Hama blended together.
Our Hama not only gives us our human shape, but also our individual shape: the appearance, voice, behavior, auric energy signatures, that belong to each unique person, along with our ability to recognize each other as distinct individuals. Thanks to the Hama, we can take action, communicate and interact within the physical world, living a physical and social life as humans rather than as disembodied spirits. This is our human Hama, and one contribution it makes to magical practice is the support that physical health, trained behavior and voice, and appearance enhanced by magical garb and accoutrements can offer.
The Hama soul (also Aldr and Ferah) exists at energy levels that are very close to the physical. Working with magical and energy healing modalities can help the Hama heal the physical body. Examples of such modalities include homeopathy, flower essences, spagyrics, energy manipulation, potions made of runes and herbs, amulets and talismans, as well as types of physical culture and martial arts that cultivate energetic health such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga, and Rune Yoga.
Because La or Lo, the energy-source for the Hama and Lichama, is seated in our blood and hair, magic performed with these items has been known to be effective in many cultures around the world, including Germanic cultures. Much of this magic as traditionally practiced is, in my opinion, manipulative and often deliberately harmful, but it does not need to be. Blood magic can be used in rites of blood siblinghood and adoption, and to contact ancestors, for example, and hair can be used (with permission!) as a basis for protective and healing charms. Being aware of the power of La and the role of the Hama soul will strengthen such magical efforts.
There is a very interesting anecdote relating to soul-healing from Laxdaela Saga (ch. 48 & 49) that tells how a man dreamed that an old woman sliced into his belly with a knife, drew out his bowels and carried them away in a wooden trough. The next day he was disemboweled during a fight and assumed to be dead. He severely startled everyone at the wake for the dead by sitting up and announcing he felt much better! He said that while he was assumed to be dead, the old woman had returned and stuffed the entrails she had previously removed back into his belly. He went on, astoundingly, to make a full recovery.
To me, it is clear that the old woman was one of his Disir. She foresaw his terrible injury, removed the entrails from his Hama soul-body and kept them safe, then after the injury she returned his Hama’s unharmed spirit-entrails to their proper place. With his Hama in good shape, his body was able to heal. I developed a pattern for a soul-working to heal the body, based on this anecdote, and present it in my article: “Disir, Hama and Hugr as Healing Partners.” (See list of further reading, below.)
Our Hama is also closely connected with, or serves as a channel for, a form of luck-energy called hamingja (ha-ming-ya). This connection is formed within the womb, as the Hama grows the physical body of the baby. “Hama” means “a covering, something contained within a covering” and refers both to clothing, and to the structures of the womb that enclose the growing baby. As the baby grows within the mother’s body, so the baby’s Hama is enclosed within, and empowered by, the mother’s Hama.
The afterbirth, and the caul or birth-membrane that some babies are born with, are also referred to as Hama or Hamingja, and are considered to hold the Hama soul along with the luck (hamingja) and vitality of the child. Many traditional magical practices are related to the afterbirth, and especially to the caul: a child born with a caul was considered to have occult or magical powers, and it was essential to preserve the caul safely. Another common type of traditional magic, that can be applied today as well, are spells, charms and other forms of magic to strengthen the Hama of the child in the womb, to prevent miscarriage and other disturbances of the Hama that could cause many serious malfunctions in the developing baby.
Hamingja is sometimes described in the lore as a spirit-being similar to or identical with the Fylgja, a spirit which accompanies and protects a human and can take different forms. In other instances, Hamingja is described as though it is an energy, a power of luck, inherent in things like heirlooms, gifts given by powerful, lucky individuals, and even inherent in especially well-favored, productive agricultural lands, farm and household implements, and domestic animals. In the same sense, the structures of the womb are considered to bear the hamingja (both luck-energy, and protective spirit-being) of the babe growing within it.
There are ways to enhance and protect the flow of hamingja-luck, and other ways it can be damaged or lost; all of these were important in the traditional customs, lore, magic, and ‘superstitions’ of the various Germanic tribes (as well as everybody else in the world, as far as I know!). One’s management of hamingja has much to do with whether one succeeds and thrives in life, or whether one diminishes and fails. Recognizing, enhancing, protecting, and directing hamingja-luck are obvious fields of endeavor for many forms of magic.
Our Hama already knows how to form and sustain a body, and endow it with abilities. Therefore it is an essential soul to tap into, when forming a Body of Light or other type of magical energy-body. The Body of Light, formed and sustained by Hama, can then, temporarily, carry within it our Hugr soul, which has great facility for traveling abroad from the physical body, or the Ghost soul, which also can travel abroad but requires that the physical body remain in sleep or heavy trance while it is gone, since Ghost carries much of our consciousness with it. If the Hugr soul travels in this way, it is called a Hug-ham.
Some humans are referred to in Nordic lore as Hamrammr or shape-strong, and are associated with an etheric or astral animal Hama, a shape that they can take on during spirit-journeys, as well as their normal human Hama. In animal form, the person could explore, scout for enemies, be a forerunner arriving at a destination before the physical person does, or be a fighter battling another person who is also in animal Hama form. To confuse things, the same abilities were attributed, in Nordic lore, to the Hama, the Fylgja, the Hamingja, and the Hugr or Hug-ham.
As far as I’m aware, the possession of an animal spirit-body was not the result of formal magical practices such as those for creating a Body of Light. It seems that some people were just born with this extra spirit-form. Some modern practitioners have also recognized this phenomenon in themselves, and others who want to have been able to develop such a form.
When witches flew through the air, it was understood that they were in another Hama (and also Hugham), different from their ‘home-Hama,’ and that rune-spells could confuse them and prevent their return ‘home’ to their fully human Hama shape (and their human Hugr) (Havamal vs. 155). The term Hug-ham refers to a shape that the Hugr soul can take on, usually either the shape of an animal, or the doppelganger of the person’s human self. Though it makes use of the word “ham”, meaning “shape,” the Hugham is a feature of the Hugr soul, taking shape outside the body of the person. It is not an aspect of the Hama soul.
These alternate Hamas (and the Hugham) are not Life-Souls as the human Hama is. All of them can leave the person’s body without causing their death, which is a feature of the Daemon souls, not the Life-Souls who cause death by their absence. Working with an alternate Hama, or acquiring one if desired, forms an obvious area of endeavor for Hama-related magic.
In working with the Elements, the Hama is most closely aligned with Earth (body) and Water (blood, La). The word ‘La’ is mysterious and rare, but has been suggested to relate to the rune Laguz and water.
Further reading: “The Shape of Being Human: The Hama Soul,” “Disir, Hama and Hugr as Healing Partners,” and part of “The Kindly Gods Go Wandering”, where I discuss the use of old Norwegian spells to deal with various problems with the Hama in the womb or escaped from the womb. Also “An Anglo-Saxon Charm Against a Dwarf,” where I argue that the Dwarf is in shape-shifted form–he ‘carries his hama in his hand,’ as it says in the charm–and that he is stealing the Hama-soul from his victim.
Further reading:
https://heathensoullore.net/the-shape-of-being-human-the-hama-soul/
https://heathensoullore.net/study-guide-5-exploring-your-hama-lich-hama-and-ellor-hama/
https://heathensoullore.net/disir-hama-and-hugr-as-healing-partners/
Aldr and Werold
(Ealdor, Eldi, Alds)
The Aldr, another Life-Soul, was first given to the newly-formed humans by the Norns, after the other deities had provided Ferah, Ghost with Ahma, Wode, and Hama. Though the new humans now had spiritual and physical shapes suited for their lives in physical and metaphysical space, something was still lacking to make them fully human: orlog or orlay, which gives a person ‘shape’ within the dimensions of Time and Wyrd.
‘Shape’ is a concept relating to Space, but its analog within Time can be called ‘continuity’. Orlog provides that continuity: the deeds which inevitably lead to other deeds, events leading to other events; the webs of fate co-woven by ourselves, the Norns, and others with whom we closely interact. Because of orlog, the human experience is not random; it is patterned. Events happen because other events happened, deeds build on deeds, and life builds on lives gone by. Each lays down layers in the Well of Wyrd, which together with the World-Tree forms the fabric of Space-Time. Orlog holds us in Time, as our body holds us in Space.
The word Aldr comes from the root *al-, ‘to nourish’. That is also the root of our word ‘old’, and other ancient and modern words pertaining to age. Aldr is involved in our health and well-being, on which our lifespan (ability to reach old age) and Werold depend. Aldr-runar are mentioned in the Rigsthula, and I understand these to be runes used to promote health and safety, including runes for dangerous activities such as childbirth and seafaring, and runes to quench fire, and to soothe, comfort and allay sorrow in people. All of these are mentioned in Rigsthula, and all can be applied toward enhancing people’s lifespans and life experiences: their Werolds, their personal world of life and experience that the Aldr soul weaves throughout its lifetime.
An ‘alveig’ is a ‘nourishing drink’ in literal translation; I see it as a potion containing magically enhanced herbs and strengthened with runic and other magics. The ancient Hindu medical system called Ayur-veda is based on the same meaning as ‘eald’ and ‘aldr’: it means ‘science / knowledge (veda) of the life-span (ayur)’. The same word in Anglo-Saxon would be ‘Ealdor / Aldr -wita’. I have not come across this term in my reading, but it would be a suitable one for modern Heathens to use, to designate a field of natural and magical healing skills: Aldrwita.
Like the Hama and Ferah, the Aldr soul is very close to the physical level of being. When a Geatish spearman shot a sea-serpent, it was said that the spear actually ‘stood in the Aldr’ of the serpent (Beowulf ll. 1433-5). The same phenomenon was told, in ancient Greek, of the God Hermes shooting cattle ‘in their aions’ with his arrows.
In healing magic, working with these close-to-physical souls is of great usefulness and importance. This is especially the case for Aldr, which controls the life-span, our life in time, and the Hama soul, which controls our body, our life in space. Magic for these purposes can take many forms: herblore and potions, rune-work, alchemy, spagyrics, enhancing the nourishing and healing powers of food and drink, including mother’s milk for infants, divination to deeper understand health issues, magic to ease the troubles of old age, and many others. These techniques can also be applied to enhance the health and extend the life-span of already healthy people, adding magical enhancements to physical training, preparing and serving foods and potions healthy for mind and body, and so forth.
Other types of magic in which the Aldr is fruitfully involved include working with wyrd and orlay. Divination, working with the Norns and ‘fairy godmothers’ or lesser norns, blessing a newborn child with magic to help establish a good Werold or lifetime for it: these are other options for working with Aldr.
In German lore, Frau Holle draws the souls of babies from her sacred pond or well. I see her as the sponsor and giver of the Aldr soul as well as the Norns, and working with her is a fruitful path for Aldr-magic in many ways. Aldr really blossoms under the matronage of Frau Holle, with her concerns for nourishment, protection, healing, the natural world, and the right conduct of our life in the world—so many aspects of weaving our Werold. The branch of Heathenry called Urglaawe has much to teach about the German Goddesses, their Well, and a great deal more.
Aldr is most attuned to the Elements of Water and Earth.
Further reading:
https://heathensoullore.net/aldr-and-orlay-weaving-a-world/
https://heathensoullore.net/study-guide-5-exploring-your-hama-lich-hama-and-ellor-hama/
and other articles in the menu sections “Orlog, Wyrd and Luck” and “Meditations” on this website.
Saiwalo
(Sawol, Sawle, Sele, Sal, Seola, Siole)
There are some interesting ways that our Saiwalo soul, while not heavily involved in our Midgard life and abilities, can contribute to specific fields of esoteric and magical practice. These include the use of imagery: as I understand Saiwalo, it is the source of the images we create, inherit, absorb, distort, adapt, etc. Imagery is heavily used in many forms of magic, and our Saiwalo soul is the source and sink of our image-making ability, something I will be discussing further in upcoming articles.
Saiwalo, as the Hel-Dwelling soul, is also obviously involved in genuine ‘necro-mancy’ (meaning ‘dead-prophecy / divination’ in Greek), that is: divination and communication with the dead, the shades dwelling in Hel. ‘Necromancy’ in the sense of working with corpses and re-animated corpses, called ‘lich-wiglung’ or ‘corpse divination / magic’ in Anglo-Saxon, relates primarily to the Hama soul, which is the one that reanimates the body in instances where that occurs, resulting in the Draugr. This is dark Hama magic, rather than Saiwalo magic; I will not write any more about it with respect to specific magical practices!
Further discussion of the Saiwalo’s roles in magic will be discussed in later articles, as I am still working on writing and publishing articles about the basic nature of Saiwalo, which will lay the necessary foundation for further exploring ‘Saiwalo in action.’
The Saiwalo soul is most associated with Water. A mysterious fragment from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus resonates very strongly with my sense of Saiwalo’s being. Here is the quotation, describing the Greek soul called the ‘Psyche’. The Gothic translator of the Greek Bible into Gothic recognized the similarity between Psyche and native Gothic Saiwala and used this word Saiwala consistently to translate Psyche. This quotation relating to Psyche also applies well to Saiwalo, I believe:
“As Psyches are born through the death of water, water is born through the death of earth. And as water comes into being from earth, so from water does Psyche.”
(Heraclitus Fragment DK B36, my translation. http://wwwheraclitusfragments.com. If you look at the translation on this website, it’s slightly different from mine: “it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become earth, etc.” I don’t agree with this translation. The Greek text clearly uses the word ‘genesthai’ meaning ‘are born’ here: “souls are born through the death of water, etc.” This change of words in the translation seriously changes the esoteric meaning of this fragment. This translation, it seems to me, would make the process of genesis go backwards into death, rather than forward into birth. For poets, that might not matter. For esotericists, it does! Also note that the Heraclitus fragments seem to have various different numbering systems. Sometimes this fragment is #68, and there are other numbering systems as well.)
In my article “The Soul and the Sea” I pursue the connection between Saiwalo and water further, including the probable etymology of the word itself, coming from saiws, meaning ‘the sea’ in Gothic and Primitive Germanic.
Further reading:
https://heathensoullore.net/hel-dweller-the-saiwalo-soul-part-1/
https://heathensoullore.net/the-soul-and-the-sea/
https://heathensoullore.net/alchemy-and-ecology-of-hel/
https://heathensoullore.net/alchemy-and-ecology-of-hel/
The Daemon Souls
Unlike the Life-Souls, which are shaped by the Holy Ones or by the processes of cosmogony, the Daemon souls develop independently of them from within the realm of Midgard. They are independent spirits, closely connected with us and feeling like our ‘self’, yet they can also act as ‘other’, for example by offering us rede or counsel, or information, that our conscious mind does not know, or by traveling away from the body on their own volition. They are strong-willed and can co-opt our actions in ways we don’t intend, so that sometimes we feel like we are fighting against ourselves, for example giving in to temptation in various ways, and then regretting it.
Hugr
(Hyge, Hugi, Hugs, Hu)
I have written extensively about the Hugr in two articles, “Hunting the Wild Hugr,” and “Who is Hugr?”, where I’ve mentioned a number of aspects of its esoteric powers and nature. In another article “Disir, Hama, and Hugr as Healing Partners,” posted under the menu section “Practicing Soul Lore,” I discuss a method of entering into our Hugiskeft, our ‘Hugi-ship’, a state of placing our awareness fully into the Hugr as preparation for magical or esoteric work. Two further articles, “The Occult Activities of the Hugr, Parts I and II” are specifically focused on the Hugr in esoteric and magical work. Also, there are four Soul Lore Study Guides on this website that discuss Hugr, as well as a Hugr meditation in the Meditation menu header. Hugr is so heavily involved in magic that it requires these separate articles for full discussion of its potentials. Please refer to them for discussion of the Hugr in esoteric work.
Mod
(Modhr, Moths, Muat, Moet, Mood, Mut, Mo)
As I understand, the Mod soul originates from the flows of natural energy within Midgard, similarly to natural Elementals. It was originally an independent, not very personified nature spirit, and many of these continue to exist, of course. But some of these vague energy-entities were drawn into, or joined up with, the human ‘soular system’ and evolved along with humans, bringing with them their powers and connections with nature energies, but also the challenges of dealing with a very different type of soul, one which I would call, among other things, ‘ornery’!
In my earlier article, “Dances with Daemons: The Mod Soul”, I used the example of our gut microbiome, which is within our body but not actually part of our body, and which can be both beneficial and harmful to us, to describe this human-Mod relationship, including the role of Mod in illnesses, spirit-attacks, fatigue and depression. I described how the Mod-daemon can express itself as a spirit of illness, among many other expressions, and affect our body in the same ways as micro-organisms do. Some esoteric practitioners recognize that bacterial species and populations, for example, have something like an oversoul which can be worked with through shamanic healing techniques. These bacterial / viral etc. oversouls may be primitive relatives of the Mod-elementals in nature. Please refer to “Dances with Daemons” for further discussion of these ideas, and their connection with esoteric work.
Mod appears in Gothic and Nordic lore as a state of high energy and raging emotion, much like uncontrolled Wode. Thor is described as being ‘in Jotunmodi’, in a state of powerful energy and rage like the Jotnar. ‘Asmodi’, the Mod of the Aesir, is another phrase used. This is Mod in its elemental form: powerful, raw, unsubtle, motivated by Will but not necessarily by Wisdom. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Mod appears in Old Saxon and Anglo-Saxon writings as a fully developed Inner Person, the Persona, the Ego, who urges and motivates the person into powerful actions and deeds.
In the Anglo-Saxon dictionary, mod means ‘heart, mind, spirit, mood, temper, courage, arrogance, pride, power, violence.’ Reading the word in context in the various languages shows meanings of determination, strength, skill, and ‘virtue’ in the sense of a special quality or potency, such as the healing virtue of herbs. The word ‘mod’ was very frequently paired with the word ‘maegen’ or ‘main’; their meanings tend to blend together. The dictionary definition of maegen is: ‘bodily strength, might, main, force, power, vigor, valor, virtue, efficacy.’ Note that I use capitalized Mod to refer to the soul-being, and lower-case mod to refer to power, virtue, etc., of beings and objects.
Mod, Dwarves and Landwights
Other beings have Mod besides humans and deities, including animals and even natural phenomena like mighty waves and hard-mody storm clouds. Among the most interesting to me are the Dwarves. To provide an example of the esoteric faculties of the Mod-soul, let’s consider the first two Fathers of Dwarven-kind: Modhsognir and Durinn. Modhsognir can mean ‘mod-sucker’, also ‘foam-sucker’, a person who sucks the froth from the beer. These are not entirely unrelated. A good beer is known (from medieval brewer’s guild documents) to have mod, and the drinking of beer raises mod within a person. So I take his name to be Mod-sucker, for this and many other reasons.
This name, Mod-sucker, has many implications. In Norse and Germanic folk-tradition, dwarves are known to suck energy from people and domestic animals, leaving them tired and ill. The word ‘mod’ also has the meaning of ‘tired, fatigued, exhausted.’ So this—the sucking of energy and causing fatigue—would be the negative connotation of his name. But in a greater mythical sense, I see much more to it. Dwarves are great craftsmen, creating amazing magical works that no other race of beings can equal. I also think that many Landwights are of the Dwarven kind.
Both of these functions require enormous inputs of energy: for crafting magical items, and for ensouling and energizing natural features of the land. I think that the fundamental activity of the Dwarves, that underlies everything else that they do, is as transformers of mod-and-maegen energy from diffuse ambient sources into concentrated, directed sources: namely, themselves and their works. (Michael Denny’s “Thunder Wizard” has some interesting ideas along these lines about dwarves, pp. 93-97 and 110-117.) As well as sucking mod-energy from ambient sources, though, they are not averse, on occasion, to sucking it from humans and animals!
Dwarves were either formed directly from Ymir’s limbs (Voluspa vs. 9) or from maggots who were eating the sacrificed Ymir (Gylfaginning p. 16). The Gods were said to have transformed the first ones and gave them sentient minds. The idea of dwarves being formed from maggots seems disgusting and insulting, and quite likely was intended to be so in the story. But there is another, esoteric perspective to take on this: as maggots, the dwarves were sucking from the primordial source—Ymir—and transforming that energy within themselves, preparing for their own great work of transformation and their creative work to come. The first and most famed (according to Voluspa vs. 10) of the dwarves, Modsognir / Mod-sucker, is the master of this craft of mod-condensing. Personally, I think it is very likely that Modsognir transformed himself from a maggot into a Dwarf, without help from the Deities!
The second Dwarf to be formed was Durinn; he and Modsognir ‘made’ (or transformed) all the rest. ‘Durinn’ could mean ‘door-keeper, sleepy, or demonic being’ (Simek). All of these meanings are significant. Dwarves can certainly be considered demonic or daemonic beings, as the Mod soul is also, in my conception of it. I believe Durinn’s main function is as Modsognir’s doorkeeper: he controls access to the mod that Modsognir sucks and accumulates. When Durinn opens the door, concentrated mod is available; when he closes it, it is not. The lack of mod causes sleepiness and fatigue, hence his name ‘sleepy,’ that applies when the door is closed.
Overall, Durinn functions as the active chieftain of the Dwarves, their ‘ring-giver’ in the form of activated mod-power, while Modsognir is more sequestered and mysterious, more like a Dwarf-God, a source of power, than like a chieftain involved with the business of the folk. This goes along with the idea that he and Durinn transformed themselves from maggots to Dwarves, using concentrated Ymir-mod, and then were able to transform all the other Dwarves the same way. As I’ve worked more with these ideas, I have indeed come to believe that Modsognir and Durinn are Dwarf-Gods: Modsognir is mysterious, standing outside of ordinary life, a source of divine power for them, while Durinn is their chieftain-God, leader of their folk.
I’ve gone into a lot of detail here about the Dwarves because I think this tale has many implications for the practice of magic and use of mod-energy by the Mod soul, and I offer it for your further consideration! There’s a connection here with one of the meanings of mod: namely, as ‘virtue’ in the sense of possessing a special power. We speak of the ‘virtue’ of an herb, a potion, a magical object. The reason the herb, potion, magical object can do what it can do, is that it has mod and maegen. Sometimes this is naturally inherent, as in an herb; other times that virtue is there because it was created or enhanced by magical techniques such as rune-craft or galdor.
An understanding of the Dwarves’ role as mod-condensers, and ideally gaining their aid, can help us in any magical endeavor that involves instilling or heightening virtue or mod within an object. A word of caution, however: the Dwarves can be tricky and hostile, as well as helpful at times. They are extremely clannish and don’t like outsiders. Dealing with Dwarves is another whole kettle of fish, outside the scope of this article. Landwights are often much easier to work with than are the deep-living dwarvish tribes of craft-folk, if you approach the Landwights appropriately and offer them your help as well as asking them for theirs. Always be courteous, and willing to take ‘no’ for an answer!
And if you do try to deal with Dwarves, be well- protected, watch your words (and your back) carefully, be careful of both making and breaking promises, and know when to back out. And never steal from them! Including stealing mod. That will gain you their life-long enmity; they are not forgiving people. All in all, seeking help from Landwights, who are very good mod-condensers, is really preferable to dealing with deep-Dwarves for most of us. There is less risk, more gain, and mutual benefit when we help the Landwights with their tasks, as well as seeking their help with ours.
Back to Mod’s Nature….
Unlike Hugr, which can easily and voluntarily leave the body without harming it, the Mod soul prefers to stay firmly within the body. However, Mod can be forcibly removed or weakened, including by magical means, with consequences for the physical self that can include weakness, lethargy, depression, illness, and paralysis. Paralysis itself is called ‘modstuhlen’ or mod-stolen in Old Swedish. I suspect that the phenomenon of ‘war-fetter’, the paralysis of warriors in the midst of battle by rune or galdor magic, is in effect a theft of, or injury to, their Mod-souls which deprives them of strength, courage, will, and motive force. I mentioned earlier that Dwarves are suspected of Mod-theft, causing fatigue and illness, and many other evil spirits, wights, hags, etc, are also accused of this, including illness-causing wights which are actually called ‘mo’ (a variant of ‘mod’).
A fruitful area of magical practice is developing ways to strengthen and protect our own and others’ Mod-souls, and using magic (as is found in many medieval spells) to cast away evil wights preying on Mod, and to restore it to strength. (See my article “The Kindly Gods Go Wandering” for examples.) In this day and age, in addition to evil wights, we also have all the stresses, strains, assaults and bombardments from media, technology, social frictions, political gridlocks, disasters and threats, terrorism and pandemics, economic and environmental stresses, and general overwhelm, that wears out our Mod and our other souls, too! They all need to be protected and fortified, and our Mod-soul can help with that once we have learned how to focus and direct it.
Here are some other important areas for Mod-magic:
Developing and working with Mod powers through martial arts and other types of physical training and challenges; enhancing physical strength, prowess, mental focus, courage and determination. This very much applies to those with physical disabilities or other limitations on physical activities, as well, who can adapt these types of training to their own circumstances. Scientific experiments have shown that even imagining using a limb or other muscle, without actually using it, increases circulation and health of that area. Replacing physical training with a disciplined, self-designed program that uses mental imagery of physical training, in place of actual physical training, can serve to develop our Mod-soul’s strengths and skills equally well, especially its strengths of mental focus, courage, determination, confidence, and well-justified pride in one’s accomplishments. This is a good way of putting our Mod-soul and its abilities to work as a link between the esoteric and the physical levels.
Mind-craft: using the Mod-soul to strengthen thinking skills, especially related to strategic thinking and practical problem-solving, which make use of mental focus, courage and determination.
Using Mod power, including linking with the Mod-power of Deities, to exorcise wights causing illness, depression, fatigue, and weakness.
Maegen / energy-healing.
Getting to know at a gut-level (not just knowing intellectually, but sensing and feeling) how your Mod interfaces with your Lichama, your living body, and its functions of metabolism, immunity, strength, and general health. Figuring out how you can maximize these functions, working with your Mod-soul as a guide and a source of self-discipline to build your health and strength.
Using Mod and maegen power to empower charms, talismans, amulets, etc.
Working with your own Mod-soul to transform its negative expressions, such as rage, into positive strengths, such as clear-sighted evaluation and strategic action.
Concerning the Elements related to Mod: I have the sense that (a) our Mod-souls are quite individualistic and vary from person to person as to their Elemental strengths, and (b) our Mod (and Hugr) souls are complex, Earth-born souls that tend to naturally reflect all the Elements to some degree, just as the environment of Earth does. If Elemental attribution matters to you, I suggest you work with your own Mod and Hugr souls to discover more about their elemental natures.
Further reading:
https://heathensoullore.net/dances-with-daemons-the-mod-soul/
In addition, four of the Soul Lore Study Guides discuss the Mod soul.
I have yet to write a section for the final soul, Sefa, and the mystical practice of compassion that this soul can pursue. Sefa is also involved in all our relationships, where beneficial spells and blessings may be appropriate, though great care must be taken to avoid manipulative and coercive magic in relationships. I will add this section at some point! In the meantime, here are the readings:
https://heathensoullore.net/sefa-the-soul-of-relationship/
https://heathensoullore.net/study-guide-11-sefa-hugr-and-modsefa/
https://heathensoullore.net/sefa-soul-the-channel-of-compassion/
https://heathensoullore.net/sefa-and-the-mystery-of-compassion-compassion-part-ii
The Fylgja and Other Helping Spirits
There are a number of spirits mentioned in lore and folklore that accompany and help humans, and can also be considered Daemon souls. Among them are the Fylgja, Disir, Hamingja, Kinfylgja, and Gandr. Though they are much involved in occult and magical activities, I am not covering them here because my focus is on our own human ‘soular system’, the souls who together make up our self and who we are in this life in Midgard. These other spirits are closely associated with us and reflect aspects of our character and ancestry, but they are not our ‘self’. There is a good deal of writing by other Heathens and by academic scholars on these subjects that can be explored.
For myself, I believe that it is good to become very familiar with our own souls first: understand them, balance them, heal them, work with them, before branching out to work with our associated spirit companions. Though clearly, both sets of spirit-beings are of the greatest interest for esoteric work!
Selected Anglo-Saxon (and other) terms relating to esoteric work:
Scinn = ‘sheen’, shining, radiance. A phantom, specter, magical image; a visible spirit. Pronounced ‘sheen’.
Scinnhiw = ‘shining shape’, with the same meanings as above. ‘Hiw’ means form or shape, including spirit-forms. Pronounced ‘sheen-hue’.
Scinnseoc = ‘sheen-sick’, haunted, afflicted by specters and ghosts.
Scinfeld = ‘field of the shining’: this is how the Greek Elysian Fields, the realm of the blessed dead, was translated into Anglo-Saxon. Pronounced ‘sheen-feld’.
Words for spirit-working (shamanistic arts, sorcery): Scinncraeft (sheen-craft), Scinnlac (sheen-lock). Lac = play, sport, strife, battle, sacrifice, offering, gift, message. Scinn combined with Lac seems to me to describe the many functions of a shaman or similar worker very nicely: shamans may work with spirits in all the many ways described by Lac!
Words for shamanistic practitioners: Scinnlaeca: masculine word, wizard, magician (sheen-lack-ah) and Scinnlaece: feminine word, sorceress, witch (sheen-latch-eh). If you prefer a non-gendered word, which you can’t really find in Anglo-Saxon but we can wing it, you could use the term Sheen-crafter or Sheener (scinnere).
My suggestions for modern Heathen use are: ‘Sheencraft’ for the practice, and ‘Sheenlock’ (from scinnlac) or else Sheen-crafter, to refer to the practitioner. These words are easy to pronounce and remember, but are still close to the Anglo-Saxon words.
Lybb and Lybesn = drug, poison, charm, amulet, knot. Pronounced ‘lueb, leeb’, ‘luebsn’.
Lybcraeft = skill in use of drugs, charms, magic and witchcraft, also Lyb-lac.
Lybbestre = (woman) practitioner, sorceress, witch. ‘Lueb-bes-treh’. Lyblaeca = (man) practitioner, wizard, sorcerer. ‘Lueb-lack-ah’. Generic suggestion: Lyb-crafter.
Lybwyrt = Lyb-wort, any plant used in Lybcraft.
Unlybwyrt = Un-lyb-wort, any poisonous plant used in Lybcraft. Also ‘Unlyb’ means a poison or a dangerous drug or other item, and Un-lyb-craeft is the craft of making and using the same.
To clarify: Sheencraft works directly with spirits and is thus similar to shamanism. Lybcraft works with materials used for magic, healing, etc., such as herbs, potions, amulets, charms, etc. It is most similar to modern ideas of witchcraft or cunning-folk. Unlybcraft refers to the use of harmful magical items.
Dry = wizard, druid. Pronounced ‘dree’. This is not a native Germanic word, it is borrowed from Celtic ‘druid’.
Drycraeft = magic, sorcery, wizardry. Dry-craeftiga or Dree-crafter is the practitioner, drycraeftig or Dree-crafty is ‘skilled in magic, wizardry’.
Old Norse Vitki = wizard, rune-crafter, magician. The cognate word in Angelseax is Witega (WIT-eg-ah, masc) and Witegestre (fem, which can more easily be pronounced as WIT-eg-ess). In Anglo-Saxon these terms referred more generally to ‘wise folk, counselors, advisors’, rather than to magicians and the like. But a term for ‘wise folk, counselor’ is useful in esoteric work, too!
A term I created from Germanic roots is Aldr-wita, cognate to Ayur-veda, the name of a very ancient healing system in India. (See my section on the Aldr soul, above, and its function of enhancing and expanding our life-span.) Aldr-wita, meaning ‘Aldr-knowledge, Aldr- wisdom’ can be used to designate a Heathen system of health practice that could encompass modern alternative healing methods along with traditions from Germanic lore.
An Al-veig is an old Norse word meaning “nourishing / magical drink,” that can be used to mean a magical healing potion empowered by herbs and / or runes and galdors, as part of the practice of Aldrwita.
A practitioner of Aldrwita can be called an Aldrwitega (m), or Aldrwitegess (f). A non-gendered alternative term could be ‘Aldrwise’, if you don’t find it awkward to turn an adjective into a noun. Speaking for myself, ‘Aldrwise’ sounds good and is easy to get used to as the term for a person skilled in Aldrwita: “I’m going to talk to the Aldrwise today about my insomnia.” Another term to use is Aldr-wizard, especially for a practitioner who focuses on more formal-magical approaches, as opposed to more natural approaches such as herbcraft.
It may be that Urglaawe, a modern branch of Heathenry based on Pennsylvania ‘Dutch’ or Deitsch traditions, can contribute more terms to add to this list from their practices of Braucherei and Hexerei.
Bookhoard
Denny, Michael William. The Thunder Wizard Path: Modern Teutonic Shamanism. Lexington KY 2011.
Hall, J.R. Clark, with supplement by Herbert D. Merritt. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th Edition. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Canada, 1960.
Jonsson, Finnur. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Udgivnet efter Handskrifterne af Kommissionen for det Arnamagnaeanske Legat. Gyldendalske Boghandel – Nordisk Forlag, Kobenhavn, Denmark, 1931.
Jonsson, Finnur. De Gamle Eddadigte. G.E.C. Gads Forlag, Kobenhavn, Denmark, 1932.
Larrington, Carolyne, transl. The Poetic Edda, Revised Edition. Oxford University Press, New York, 2014.
Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Transl. Angela Hall. Alfred Kroener Verlag, Stuttgart. 1993.
Sturlason, Snorri. Edda. Transl. Anthony Faulkes. Everyman, Charles E. Tuttle, Vermont. 1995.
An earlier version of this article was published as “The Magical Nature of the Heathen Full-Souls, Heathen Soul Lore #10” in Idunna: A Journal of Northern Tradition, #119, Spring 2019. Revised and retitled June 2020.