Winifred Hodge Rose
The first thing I want to say here is that nobody is ‘required’ to engage in contemplation with our Deities! Some people are attracted to the idea, some find that it comes naturally without much effort, some people feel that contemplation would round out their spiritual practice in desirable ways. Other people feel no need for it at all. All of that is fine; many—probably the majority—of Heathens have excellent relationships with their Deities without any such practice. This essay is for the former people, those who are intrigued by the idea of Heathen contemplation or feel called to it, and would like some more insight into the practice.
Contemplation versus Meditation
Let’s start off by defining ‘contemplation’ and distinguishing it from ‘meditation.’ This is rather tricky because I’ve seen definitions of these approaches in books and online that directly contradict each other. Some say that meditation is a ‘stilling of one’s thoughts,’ which is very true for some important types of meditation such as ‘mindfulness meditation,’ but is not true of other types such as ‘discursive meditation,’ where one takes a brief idea or passage of reading and thoughtfully pursues that as far as possible. The same sources describe ‘contemplation’ in a way that sounds much like discursive meditation, such as lectio divina or sacred reading where one takes a passage of religious writing and focuses on going deeply into its meaning.
Meditation is an activity that we initiate and control ourselves, that does not depend on contact with a Deity, that may not even be focused on any Deity, but on some other meaningful idea or practice. Our meditation can be planned in advance, can be specifically designed for a given purpose, and can be directed by a meditation leader, for example a guided meditation or a meditation class or study group. This is not the case with godly contemplation.
The kind of contemplation I’m talking about here is quite different from meditation. It’s something I began to learn from my experiences in the past with other religions, and it has universal application in any religion where one seeks contact with one’s Deities. Contemplation is a ‘wild card.’ It is not something fully under our control because it depends upon true contact with a Deity and that Deity’s intentions for our contact. Just as we can’t totally predict and control and plan in advance about how our interactions with other people will go, we can’t do that with Deities, either. They are their own beings and we can’t ‘stage’ or ‘direct’ our interactions with them if we want true and deep contact with them, any more than we can do so with people if we want genuine and deep interactions with them. Even less so with Deities, really, than with people.
People are easier for us to know, to have some idea of how they will behave and what they want, though really making such assumptions about other people tends to be problematic as well. Deities are different from people, harder to understand and predict, impossible to manipulate though people may try to do so! Genuine contact with Deities, especially our Heathen Deities, tends to result in a lot of surprises, things we were not expecting or imagining. “Taken by surprise” is a phrase frequently used to describe one’s contact with a Deity, in our religion and in many others as well!
‘Meditation’ is a human-directed action, using our human abilities and the processes of our own being, whether it is emptying our minds of thought, or whether we are using methods of focused thought. ‘Contemplation’ is, to put it dramatically, flinging ourselves into the unknown and trusting that there is someone ‘out there’ who is willing to ‘catch us,’ to receive our contact and interact with us. Methods, planning, exercises, etc., that we may try to undertake for such contemplation can only take us so far, because the achievement of true contemplation is not something we are fully in control of; our Deities are. They are capable of ‘hijacking’ our awareness if they wish for contemplative contact with us, though we can choose to reject this; whereas we cannot successfully demand or insist on their attention.
What we can do is try to understand what this kind of contemplation really involves—actually, it may be more important to understand what it doesn’t involve—and indicate to our Deities that we want to engage in it, that we are receptive to contemplative contact with them. And they may not wait for this from us, either; it’s well-known in many religions, and certainly in ours, that Deities can and will take us totally by surprise and set in motion major changes in our inner self and our lives at times and in ways that we did not anticipate.
This does not mean that we are forced to obey them, that we have to accept everything they want from us: we do not. That is our choice; that part is under our control. We are in control of ourselves, but we are not in control of the Deities. We may want to contact one of them, and they may decide not to answer, for their own reasons. We may want something from them and they may not give it, or may give something different than we asked for (this frequently happens!). And we may do the same toward them. They are in control of themselves, we are in control of ourselves.
In order to contact and communicate with them, and share experiences and knowledge, both we and our Deities must accept that we are all free and autonomous beings, that we do not control each other nor control our interactions with each other. Coming together is a free choice; both sides must be open and willing to engage without seeking to control the other. In the case of humans, this is true because we cannot control the Deities; in the case of Deities, this is more of a courtesy. They do have the power to overwhelm us—all they need to do is show more of their true nature to us than we have the ability to absorb and deal with. But if they want true communication with us then they need to, and do, temper their power so that we are not overwhelmed by it unless we are, at some level, ready and willing for that to happen.
Contemplation is an engagement of the heart,of the truest, deepest, most sincere aspects of ourselves. We engage from a place where manipulation, misdirection, ignorance, lies, hiding from ourselves and others, is impossible. Our minds, our thoughts, can play many tricks and engage in complex, multilayered behavior and thinking. It’s easy to become confused, to misunderstand, to project ourselves into our perceptions of others, to become overwhelmed, when we use our ordinary thinking minds through which to interact with the Deities. Not that this is a bad thing to do—it’s good to interact with the Deities through all our faculties, including our everyday thinking mind, for sure. But this is not ‘contemplation;’ it’s something we can explore through meditation, active prayer, and other interactions with the Deities.
Contemplation is communion through the resonance of the heart, not the thoughts of the mind. The resonance of the heart is not simply ‘emotion,’ it lies even deeper than that. Let’s talk about what this is like, beginning with a visit to the multilayered ‘planes of being’ where different aspects of ourselves operate.
The Planes of Being
Many schools of esoteric thought recognize what are called ‘Planes of Being’ or levels where different kinds of subtle energies and subtle beings operate, and I find this a useful concept. To describe it simply, the material plane is our physical world, the world of matter, and it’s where our modern sciences work so effectively. Communication on this plane occurs through the use of our physical bodies, through chemical signals such as scents, and other material means.
Next is the etheric plane, the energetic level where the life-force operates and vivifies all living things and their life-energies. Here is where techniques such as acupuncture and many other ‘alternative’ energetic health and healing modalities operate. It’s also how physical-energetic skills such as Tai Chi, Qigong, and Yoga function. Though not yet more than vaguely recognized (if that) by modern science, many of the energies and interactions of living things whose effects are perceptible to us in the material world originate at this etheric level. Communication on this plane happens through subtle energies that are only just beginning to be suspected by modern sciences, for example the subtle communications among trees and plants which include—but may go beyond—chemical-biological signals.
The astral plane comprises the energies that are perceived and shaped by us as ‘feeling, thinking, imagining, dreaming, creativity;’ a great deal of what we experience as meaningful human life and inner activity occurs on this plane. Communication on this plane occurs through the many varieties of emotional expression, imagination (which is essential for planning anything, for example), and visualization in all its forms, including all the arts and other creative forms of expression.
The next layer ‘up’ from that is the mental plane, where more abstract concepts and thoughts occur, where concepts are imbued with ‘meaning,’ and where our ability to express concepts and meanings in the form of words and abstract symbols such as mathematics, alphabets, or runes originates. Communication on this level occurs through words and symbols as vehicles for abstract concepts and meaning. This essay that you are reading is a form of mental communication: it is connecting our minds through the medium of written (symbolic) words and the thoughts that they express: thoughts in my mind as I write, and thoughts in your mind as you read. Most forms of meditation and prayer, I would say, occur on either the astral or the mental level.
‘Above’ the mental level is the spiritual plane, and this is where we are functioning during an experience of true contemplation. What I describe in the following section is my own perception of how communication occurs on this plane, but I believe it is consistent with the perceptions of spiritual practitioners on many different paths.
Resonance
I’ve talked about communication on the different planes: material interactions, life-energy interactions, emotional and creative interactions, abstract and symbolic interactions. Now we come to communication on the spiritual plane, and in my perception this occurs through resonance. Not words, not emotional feelings, not ideas, not symbols or abstract images, though we may later transform our experience of resonance into all of these things, after our contemplation is over and we are trying to express it to ourselves and others. Resonance is an experience of vibrational attunement between one being and another (or many beings together), on a very refined and subtle level of Being and energy.
What is this like? Here’s an example of contacting Thor contemplatively / immersively. I chose his characteristic ‘thunder’ as a seed-image for this. (I will explain about seed-images later.)
Contemplatively, I immerse myself in thunder, surround myself with everything that thunder is: it shakes my being, its vibrations reshape everything inside and outside myself, pushing out stagnancy, bringing in new waves of power. This immersion is an invitation; it opens a path between me and Thor…will he respond? He does.
I am a vibration, Thor is a vibration, we draw into resonance with each other for a timeless time. There’s a voice in his thunder: what does it utter? I open my heart and Thor’s thunder roars through.
My heart can sense the wordless resonances and transform them into meaning. Thunder recedes into a murmur on some unseen horizon, vibrations turn back into my physical being, renewed by resonance with Thor’s thunder.
….And then I’m back, back in my regular Midgard mind-frame. I’m forced to describe this experience with words and concepts in order to communicate it, but that is done after the event is over, and it’s never very accurate! Contemplation isn’ta guided meditation that is designed in advance. Instead, we throw ourselves into the unknown, in the direction—we hope—of a Deity we wish to interact with and see what happens if and when we get there. During the event, we are submerged in the direct experience of Being, not in our mental-verbal description of it. Our attempt to describe it afterwards is a pale reflection of the experience, often better captured in art, poetry, music, or sacred dance.
I chose this example of Thor and his thunder because the vibrational element is obvious, but it does not have to be literal vibrations like thunder. As one example of divine resonance, Christian imagery offers visions of “choirs of angels around the throne of God,” where the angels not only sing great harmonies of praise—a form of sound-resonance—but are perceived as being artistically arranged in fractal patterns. Fractal patterns are also resonances: resonances of spatial arrangements rather than of sound, where the patterns reflect each other at infinitely larger and smaller scales. Here is an example.
If you’ve ever looked at illustrations of circular fractals online or in books or magazines, you will certainly see the resemblance with these ‘choirs of angels’! I believe that visionaries from all religions perceive such resonances and fractal patterns when they are immersed in an experience of the spiritual plane, though they may express their perceptions differently depending on religious and cultural contexts. The mandalas of the Hindus and Buddhists, for example, show similar kinds of patterns. In my experience, resonances can be expressed as things like ‘orchestras of color-tonalities,’ ‘symphonies of scent-shadows,’ and resonances of phenomena for which we have no sensory analogs.
The meaning, I believe, of resonances and fractals on the spiritual plane is this: we are attuned, whether we know this or not, with orders of being that are ‘larger’ and ‘smaller’ than ourselves, attuned with all the orders of being and expressions of life across the physical and metaphysical worlds. What resonates with them resonates with each of us, and vice versa. The ‘attunement’ is expressed as resonance, and the ‘interweaving patterns of Being’ by fractals.
When we step outside of all the perceptions that belong to the material, etheric, astral, and mental planes of being, we experience this resonant attunement without the overlaid distractions of perceptual layers that are natural to the other planes of being. Very often the experience of resonance on the spiritual plane is an intense and overwhelming simplicity, an utter immersion into one thing only: that ineffable resonance between our Self and Deity.
Here is another example of mine, which as usual barely manages to capture anything of the experience.
In contemplation I often see Ing-Frey at a distance, wading toward me through a fertile wetland, surrounded by a huge aura of rose-gold light glowing against a misty sunset. He exudes divine power, but warm and inviting, not distant and overpowering. I simply gaze and absorb what he offers; I have no words for this, only the resonance in my heart that is tuned to his. In this resonance is the wordless song we sing together.
There’s very little to be ‘seen’ in the ‘scenery’ of this contemplation, just the shimmering of layers of light that my mind later, after the event, interprets using the image of Ing-Frey surrounded by mist, sunset light, and the reflective surface of the marsh. This is an example of color / light resonance, rather than the sound-resonance I described with Thor.
The Resonating Heart
What is it, within ourselves, that can sense and process these resonances? On each of the planes we have sensory organs or their analogs at different levels, our brain and our various faculties such as mind, emotions, verbal and other forms of expression that can work with the conditions that pertain to each plane of being. On the physical / material plane we have our body and sensory organs. On the etheric level we and all other living beings have subtle senses and reactions, though modern people are not very good at realizing this. On the astral level there are so many ways we sense and process things, including through our emotions, imagination, and our dreams, as well as through artistic expression of all kinds. On the mental plane we grasp things with our minds, and express our thoughts through words, symbols and concepts.
On the spiritual level, the level of divine contemplation and connection, we make use of the subtle powers of our hearts. Even on the physical level, the heart is constantly involved with pulsation and vibration of every tiny strand of its muscles and nerves. Studies of people who are closely connected, such as happily married couples or mothers and babies, have found that their heartbeats synchronize when they are physically close to each other, touching or interacting in a loving way. (See a few examples at the end of this essay.) The vibrations of their hearts intermesh, the same way that striking one tuning fork will cause another tuning fork nearby to resonate without being touched.
Our hearts are made to vibrate and pulsate, and they are capable of doing so on multiple levels of being, not only the physical. Our hearts respond to emotion, to meaningful information, to situations around us, and they change their pace and patterns of vibration in response. They are extremely responsive organs, and they pick up and give out signals from all the levels or planes of being within which we exist: physical, etheric, astral, mental and spiritual levels. When we seek to interact contemplatively with a Deity, this is something that our heart is designed to do.
If we try to use our mind, our thoughts, words, verbal prayers, and concepts for contemplation, that doesn’t work as well, though we can certainly use them to prepare for and lead into contemplation, and to try to remember and understand what happened, after it is over. The reason our mind, as opposed to our heart, doesn’t work as well for contemplation is because it wants to use words and concepts, it wants to work on the mental plane rather than the spiritual. Our mind and thoughts naturally seek to define and describe our experiences, which limits that experience to something that can be defined and described with words and concepts. This is not ‘contemplation.’
Contemplating a Deity on the spiritual plane goes beyond those limitations, though we also interact with Deities on the mental, astral, and other planes, in ways appropriate to those levels. The interactions on these other levels—meditation, active prayer, offerings, Blots, studying and teaching about them, partnering with the Deities by doing tasks in Midgard that align with their wishes, etc.—these are very meaningful and important, too. I have no intention of downplaying the importance of all our interactions with the Holy Ones; I am only trying to describe a different kind of experience with them here.
How to approach contemplation
After all the discussion saying that meditation and contemplation are not the same thing, I’ll now point out that meditation is a good way to prepare for and move into a contemplative state. If we are intentionally choosing to engage in contemplation (rather than being scooped up unexpectedly into it by a Deity’s will, which may also happen), then a good way to begin the process is by using meditation as a gateway. We can begin in the same way we do for meditation: going through a process of relaxation and calm, steady breathing to still the activity of mind and body. From this state of stillness, there are two approaches we can take: we can use a seed-image as a vehicle to attune to the Deity, or we can continue in this state of receptive stillness and simply reach out to the Holy One we desire to contact. I’ll describe each of them here, beginning with the seed-image because it is an easier path for most of us to use.
Using a Seed-Image for Contemplation
As part of our preparation, we can create a ‘seed for contemplation’ about a Deity. This could involve a sentence describing a Deity’s attributes or actions, for example, or it could be an artistic portrayal of the Deity or of a metaphysical location like the World-Tree, a poem or song, a mythic or religious symbol, the account of someone else’s vision or insight, or a passage from your own journal.
But there’s another step to the process here because this seed needs to be turned into an image or symbol, if it isn’t already in that form. It’s better not to use words except for symbolic words like the Deity’s name. With words, it’s too easy to stay tuned to the mental plane; we need symbols or images here, including non-visual images like sound, sensation, or ‘impression.’ Even scent or taste are sometimes used, such as incense or metaphorical honey, that express the sensory effects of contemplation.
As examples, consider the ‘thunder’ seed-image I described for contemplating Thor—this is a sound-image rather than a visual one. The shimmering, rose-gold light that I described with Ing-Frey is so characteristic of my experiences with him that calling up this light in my imagination is a signal to shift into contemplative mode with him; something that requires very little effort to do. That light / color is a seed-image for me.
Here’s another example: say you wish to contact Tyr. You’ve read a lot about him, offered Blots to him, and have a sense of his main characteristics. How can you turn that into a symbol or impression? You can take one of his symbols from the lore that captures the aspect you most want to connect with, such as the glove on the spear at the Thing; his sacrifice of his hand; his willingness to feed Fenris. For me, I like to use the Anglo-Saxon rune poem for Tiw / Tyr, which speaks of the North Star holding course above the mists of night, ever true, never failing. I form the images of this verse into an ‘impression’ of starlight, of cold clear air, of steadfastness and trustworthiness, of high-hearted courage, of all that is ‘high and bright’. I don’t use these words as my seed-image; I sort of roll them all up into a ‘ball of impressions’ and immerse myself in it, as I do with Thor’s thunder and Ing-Frey’s light. I use this impression of the Guide-Star and all it means to reach for contact with Tiw / Tyr.
The Deity may well decide to change your chosen image and present you with a new one. This is what happened to me with Ing-Frey: the scene and light I described was a gift from him, not something I came up with. He began to appear this way to me many years ago, and it was such a powerful and perfect appearance that I started using it to call to him when I seek him contemplatively. It is also his call to me when this light begins to shimmer in my imagination. Of course, there may be more than one resonance or seed-image that opens the way between us and any given Deity.
Rather than ‘thinking about’ our seed-image as we might do in meditation, we use it as a pathway to the presence of the Deity or spiritual location (like the World-Tree, or the Well of Wyrd) that we are seeking to connect with. We follow this path / thread / seed by seeking with our heart more than with our mind, expanding our heart-energy outward and opening it up, recognizing that among its myriad talents the heart is a sensory organ, a generator and receiver of subtle resonances on multiple planes of being.
I do mean, quite literally, the heart; this is not a metaphor for ‘emotion,’ it is heart-energy itself. During the whole process, focus on your physical heart, sense its energy reaching outward to find a matching heart-energy and connect with it. It’s very difficult to describe this in words; like riding a bicycle or learning to swim, we just have to keep trying until we get it! When it ‘clicks,’ we can feel a heart-to-heart connection that encompasses all the Planes of Being together: a sense of some different energy in / around our physical heart; an enhanced perception of the life-power of our beating heart; emotional and inspirational connections with the Deity; and the stimulation of our mental and creative capacities, which also depend on input and support from our heart.
We are used to equating ‘heart’ with emotions, and certainly this is true, but it is not complete. Ancient Heathens and all other ancient cultures I know about considered that ‘thinking, intention, planning, inspiration,’ and other human capabilities come from the heart as well—come from this physical core of our being. The word ‘Hugr’ and its cognates in all the Germanic languages referred to a spirit or a capacity that lives in our chest around our heart, and gives us the ability to love, to think, to intend and plan, to foresee and be insightful, to interact in both positive and negative ways with others. All of this and more was considered to come through the heart. (See my article “Who is Hugr?” and other Hugr articles on this website.) Consciously living with and through our heart-energies often comes as a whole new experience for us, and connecting with our chosen Holy Ones in this way can help us learn how to ‘live through our heart’ in other ways as well.
An important thing to keep in mind is this: the Deity we wish to contact may or may not respond right away, nor respond in any way we were expecting. This may happen multiple times. I tried for years to contact Heimdall, for example, before he responded to me in any way other than a polite acknowledgement of my existence. I don’t know why it took so long; I probably never will. On the other hand, a Deity might come down on us like a load of bricks as happened to me with Frigg, who pretty much took over my life on all levels in her zeal to accomplish some things in Midgard through me. This frequently happens with people who are close to Odin, as well.
When we begin contemplation with a Deity, we need to be willing to accept whatever their responses are, including no response. I don’t mean that we have to do what the Deity says or be controlled by their responses. I mean it the same way we would interact with a friend: sometimes we may be forthcoming and interactive; sometimes we may not be ‘in the mood,’ or may be very involved with something else at the moment, and ask our friend for a rain check. Sometimes we may ask a lot from a friend, or they from us. We accept the give and take, the fact that everyone ‘has a life’ and has their own way of interacting, and it doesn’t need to break the friendship if we are more or less responsive at any given time. Friends give each other space to be themselves, and this is how it needs to be with Deities, too.
To summarize this seed-image approach to contemplation:
1. Choose a ‘seed-image’ of some kind: a description, a saying, an artistic representation, a musical theme or song, a feeling, a quotation from the lore, the memory of some scene or experience in your life, anything that you consider relevant to the Holy One you seek to contact.
2. If the seed-image is in the form of words rather than images, symbols, or sensations, do your best to transform the meaning of the words into an image, symbol, sensation, or impression.
3. Take a comfortable but alert position, relax your body, and gently steady your breath to reach a deep but comfortable breathing pattern.
4. Begin the contemplation with a prayer to the Deity you seek, speaking your intention to them.
5. Then immerse yourself in your seed-image and stay there. Whenever you are distracted, simply return to your seed. Spread your heart-energy and awareness out around yourself, ready to pick up any matching energies from the Holy One you seek. Create a receptive field around yourself, generated by your heart, that can sense resonances from the Deity.
6. Be aware that you may be gifted with a new seed-image or resonance from the Deity once you’ve entered into contact. Don’t resist this (unless you feel some wrongness about it) but welcome the gift and use it again in the future.
7. It’s good to record your experience, and any gifts of insight from the Deity, after you return—to the best of your ability. Be patient with yourself; this is not something that can be expressed in words with perfect accuracy! You may do better expressing it through art, music, or poetry, or some combination of all these.
‘Seedless’ Contemplation
I am mentioning this approach in the interests of completeness, but there is not honestly very much that can be said about it. This is because it is so simple—simple, but not necessarily easy. Generally speaking, this approach may develop naturally after we have spent a long time working with the seed-image approach to contemplation, though for some people it may happen more spontaneously. It may not happen at all; we may be very satisfied with the seed-image approach and not feel any need to do it differently. And the Deities we are working with may feel this is fine, too.
But it may happen that we, our Deity(s), or both together decide to move on to ‘seedless’ contemplation, at least some of the time. In my understanding, this is how it works; others may describe it differently. In our past experiences with our Deity(s) using the seed-images, our shared contemplative experiences have spun a spiritual thread that connects us. We can call this a heart-string, or a hyge-band, a Hugr-band, as it is described in the Beowulf poem! (lines 1877-1880.) The more we engage in contemplation with that Deity, the more tangible our connecting heart-string becomes. Eventually the seeds we use for contemplation may be replaced by this thread, which is always present: a thread of Being, spun by us and our Deity together out of the fibers of our shared resonance.
With seedless contemplation, we may go through meditation and prayer first and engage in a formal session, as I described above, or we may not. Flashes of contemplative connection can come any time, anywhere, under any circumstances; they can simply be interwoven into our daily life. These connections may be initiated by our conscious will, or may be directed by the Deity in the way that they want or they think we need. There isn’t any standard ‘method’ here that I can offer. The contemplative attitude and potential becomes a part of our life. It’s fair to say that the real ‘method’ involves, not our relationship with the Deity directly, but reorganizing our life to adjust and make room for this ongoing connection between us and the Deity. For religions which have contemplative monastic orders, this is exactly what they are doing.
We can generally handle such experiences much better if we have been practicing more structured contemplation, as I described about the seed-image, for a good deal of time beforehand. This is definitely what I recommend: if you want to engage in contemplation, spend a long time on the more formal process of using a seed-image first. Then see whether you and / or your Deity(s) are drawn to use the ‘seedless’ approach. If you are, and it works well for you, fine!
If you find the ‘seedless’ approach rather destabilizing, disruptive, unmanageable—which it can be, especially when you have no experienced spiritual director who knows you well, as is the case for most Heathens—then discuss it with your Deity(s) and go back to the more formal seed-image contemplation. Before you do that, though, take a break from contemplation so you can re-set your habitual patterns.
In Thanks to Frigg
I need to acknowledge here my debt to Frigg, because it was she who guided me on the contemplative path and pointed me toward understanding the nature of wordless, resonant connection and communication. Many years ago, I took a line about Frigg from the Poetic Edda as my seed-image, combined with a painting of her weaving the clouds.
The Poetic Edda passage I used was spoken by Freya, saying: “Of orlog Frigg has full knowledge, I think, although she does not speak (of it) herself.” (Lokasenna or Loki’s Quarrel, vs. 29.) I wondered why Frigg doesn’t speak of orlog, so I turned this phrase into an ‘impression of Frigg’s wordlessness,’ and combined it with the image of her weaving clouds, i.e. weaving mysteries while not speaking of them. I followed those impressions to her. When I came back I wrote the following poem.
In Thanks to Frigg, the Silent Knower
Holy Frigg, Norn-wise,
You know no tongue with which to tell
What is and what shall be,
To sort the spinning strands of possibility
Into a span of words.
Yet with your spindle and your well-strung loom,
You weave the airy clouds
And send the winds to shape them,
Writing your wordless wisdom-runes
Across the ever-changing valleys of the sky.
Teach us, Lady, to heed
The wisdom that lies beyond all words:
Echoes that resound
After words have fled.
This was one of the first formal Heathen prayers I made, and the one I have most often spoken during the thirty years and more of my Heathen life. It was only recently that I realized how profoundly and continuously Frigg has been answering this prayer.
When one plunges into experiential explorations of Heathen spirituality, after a certain point words are left behind and one’s awareness flows through fields of resonances, resounding echoes, that reach backwards and forwards through and outside of time, and all around ourselves to touch many other souls of humans and other beings. Up to a point in these explorations, words are necessary and useful. Beyond that, they tie us down, limiting us and getting in the way of pure awareness and full experience of these wordless resonances. These are the same type of resonances that one can sense in the presence of the Norns and their Well, hence I call Frigg ‘Norn-wise’ to honor that connection.
Years of working with what I’ve learned from Frigg and our other Deities have led me to the beliefs I’ve discussed here, that ‘resonances, resonance-fractals, and fields of interwoven resonances’ are to the spiritual plane what ‘words, sentences, concepts’ are to the mental plane, and what material substance is to the plane of matter. The experience behind this poem started me on this exploration and has since shaped all my spiritual explorations.
These are experiences that go far beyond words, deep into the domain of Vør, the Goddess of Awareness, whom I perceive as a soul-daughter or emanation of Frigg, an embodiment of her power of Awareness. Vør herself has an echo or resonance within each of us, stimulating and guiding the full development of our own powers of awareness.
Thus, I feel like I understand, at least in part, why Frigg does not speak of what she knows: she cannot, because it is not Word-knowledge, but Being-knowledge that she mediates to us through her ‘daughter’ Vør. My deepest thanks go to Frigg and Vør for their subtle, wordless, ongoing response to my loving prayer repeated over the years.
In Closing
To me, this is what devotional contemplation is: a movement of the heart outward toward the Holy Ones, the heart’s true desire, and an acceptance of whatever response is given back to that gesture of our spiritual heart. Even when there is no response; even when the response is incomprehensible; even when it is overwhelming and drives us to change our whole life.
It’s so simple, really, though not at all easy: we open our heart toward our spiritual desire. We actually focus on our physical heart, feel its energy expand outward, feel its warmth, the very core of our life. As with other forms of meditation, when distractions arise, we simply gently return to our outflowing heart. Our heart knows where to go, what to reach for, even when we don’t; trust it and don’t argue with it when it’s focused on the spiritual realms.
Deep in our hearts lies a Mystery of Being that doesn’t begin to grow into our awareness until we reach into these spiritual realms. We awaken that mystery by our own practice; there’s no other way to do it.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Research on synchronized heartbeats:
Here are a few examples of research showing that closely connected people synchronize their heartbeats. There are various theories as to the physical mechanism that causes this synchronization. My own interpretation is that hearts can indeed sense the pulsing of other hearts that they feel connected to on metaphysical as well as physical levels, and that the hearts ‘choose’ to resonate with those they are closest to.
“A new study from the University of Illinois examines the dynamics of long-term relationships through spatial proximity. The researchers find that when partners are close to each other, their heart rates synchronize in complex patterns of interaction. “We’re not focusing on cause and effect, but on co-regulation, which happens when heart rates move in a synchronous pattern. That is, when the partners are close, their heart rate patterns indicate an interaction that is collectively meaningful in some way.” https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211117/Heart-rates-of-older-couples-synchronize-when-they-are-close-together.aspx
“Couples connected to monitors measuring heart rates and respiration get their heart rate in sync, and they breathe in and out at the same intervals. … When the two individuals were not from the same couple, their hearts did not show synchrony, nor did their breathing closely match.” https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/lovers-hearts-beat-sync-uc-davis-study-says
“A new study shows that 3-month-old infants and their mothers can synchronize their heartbeats to mere milliseconds. Researchers sat 40 pairs of mothers and infants face-to-face, equipped with sticky skin electrodes on either side of their hearts. Beat for beat, mother-and-child hearts thumped together almost instantly as they shared loving looks or contented coos. This cardiac coupling worked only for moms with their own babies, and only when the duos synchronized smiles and other cheerful social behaviors, researchers report in this month’s issue of Infant Behavior and Development.” https://www.science.org/content/article/scienceshot-human-hearts-beat-together
“We investigated the heart rhythms of co-sleeping individuals and found evidence that in co-sleepers, not only do independent heart rhythms appear in the same relative phase for prolonged periods, but also that their occurrence has a bidirectional causal relationship.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6421336/
“When lovers touch, their breathing, heartbeat syncs, pain wanes, study shows.” University of Colorado Boulder https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621125313.htmAll
All sources were accessed on 25 October 2023.
This article is included in my book Wandering on Heathen Ways: Writings on Heathen Holy Ones, Wights, and Spiritual Practice.
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Book-Hoard and Further Reading
Chickering, Howell D. Jr., transl. Beowulf. Dual language edition. New York: Doubleday, 1977.
Larrington, Carolyne, transl. The Poetic Edda, revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Munin, Janet, ed. Polytheistic Monasticism: Voices from Pagan Cloisters. Alresford, Hampshire UK: Moon Books 2022.
Sturlason, Snorri. Edda. Transl. Anthony Faulkes. Everyman, Charles E. Tuttle, Vermont. 1995.