Winifred Hodge Rose
Preparation
You may want to have water or another drink, a little salt or food, to help you return to Midgard after the Saiwalo meditation. If this meditation seems too ‘heavy’ or wrong for you, then skip it and move to the point where you raise your Saiwalo token to bless it or place your hands on your heart to honor Saiwalo. Or create your own meditation.
Here are the items you will need.
– Soul-token(s) or materials for making soul-token(s), if you are planning to use this.
– Your altar.
– Candle in a candlestick that you can hold. If it is a votive or tea-light, place it on a dish so you can carry it without burning yourself. Matches or lighter.
– Thor’s Hammer, or other item that you use for Hallowing.
– ‘Needfire’: incense or aromatic herbs or twigs that will provide a wisp of smoke when burned, along with a suitable container (fire-pot) and charcoal if needed. I like to use a small, burning twig or stalk; if you use loose leaves, then you will need charcoal for burning them. Only a small amount is needed, for a brief time. If you don’t want to use any of these, you can use your candle, or simply imagine a Needfire in front of you. If you are using a little fire-pot with twigs or dried herbs, have a cup of water handy to put it out when you are ready.
– Whatever kind of ceremonial drink you wish to use, and your drinking horn, goblet, or other vessel. This is referred to as the ‘horn’ in the ceremony guidelines.
– A bowl with a little water in it for the blessing-bowl, and a leafy twig for sprinkling. You can use your fingers to sprinkle with, if you don’t have a twig.
– Have your Daybook handy to write any notes, questions, experiences, ideas that occur to you during your meditation and at the end of the ceremony.
Hallowing
Circle the sacred space, or turn around in place, with a lighted candle in one hand and holding a Thor’s Hammer in your other hand. Speak these words, or your own preferred words, and raise the Hammer when you say “Thor hallow”.
Fire I bear around this frithyard,
And bid all here keep frith;
Flame I bear to enclose,
Bidding bale-wights flee away.
Thor hallow, Thor hallow, Thor hallow this holy stead.
Set candle and Thor’s Hammer on your altar.
Calling
Hear me, all you hallowed folk,
Both high and low of Heimdall’s kin!
I hail you, Holy Ones of all the Worlds that are!
Ever shall frith and faith hold firm
Between myself and you:
The wellsprings of my souls.
Raise horn and drink; pour a little into the blessing-bowl.
Eldfathers, eldmothers, kindred of old,
Rooted in might, holding troth with your own,
Behold the new roots, the green shoots from your boughs,
And bless me: the fruit of your branches.
Raise horn and drink; pour a little into the blessing-bowl.
Landwights blessed, land’s life-givers,
Holy hold this stead, all harm withstand.
Be welcome here, all good wights,
And share the blessings with me.
Raise horn and drink; pour a little into the blessing-bowl.
The Needfire
If you have a Saiwalo token to initiate and bless, have it ready in front of you. If you are not using tokens, that is fine: your souls are all here with you anyway! Light your incense, herbs or twigs if you are using them. If you are not, imagine, feel, smell, or sense a smoking Needfire before you, aromatic with sacred herbs. Use the smoke, physical or imaginary, to cleanse yourself, your tokens, and the space you are in, by passing your token through the smoke, and waving the smoke around as you recite three times:
Hallowed herbs, all ill dispel,
As fuel on the fire, as smoke on the wind.
If you wish or need to, you can extinguish the Needfire when you are done.
If you have a Saiwalo token, keep it with you for the following meditation.
Saiwalo Arises: Initiatory Meditation
Relax, take a few deep breaths, and prepare yourself for a deep meditation if you decide this is good for you. Otherwise skip the meditation and go on to the point where you raise your token or hands in blessing.
Darkness, and silence. All is still. Time and space have no meaning.
There is cold on one side of me, heat on the other. Faint wisps of mist emerge, brought about by the meeting of heat and cold. The mist thickens, and eddies form around me.
The heat pushes against me, the cold pulls me toward it. Slowly I begin to spin around, and the eddies coalesce into a maelstrom of energy, there in the center of all-that-is: a thin gap drawn out of nothingness by the polarizing forces of fire and ice.
Powerful streams of force flow out from this maelstrom called Hvergelmir, separating into nodes and bands which define the boundaries of Worlds. These are the Elivagar rivers of energy.
Great clouds of mist billow outward, rising above the gap. As the mist drifts farther from the gap it cools and begins to solidify.
The mist forms into a world, Mist-World: cool and damp, quiet and still. Ripples move through the mist-substance of this world, faint quivers of proto-motion within the proto-substance.
These ripples could almost be the breath of some mighty being, lying quietly in sleep. Dim, cloud-grey, too large to see: the size of a World.
I lie now within the being of this World-Mother and feel the stirring of her breath. Her heartbeat, infinitely slow and vast, defines the parameters of Being. The surging of her blood echoes the surging of the mighty Elivagar rivers.
Again I am stirred and turned, becoming an eddy of being within this greater being. All around me are other eddies, other beings forming out of the substance of the World-Mother Audhumla: motion and substance from her breath, from the flowing of her blood.
Her breath sighs through me. Sai-wa-lo. Sai-wa-lo. Wallowing and whelming, sighing and spinning, I coalesce into a soul-being, an individual soul. Saiwalo.
I am rooted within the deepest wellsprings of the cosmos, of Being itself. In other Worlds around me, phenomena multiply: light, color, motion, weight, gravity. Other beings arise, complex and multifaceted.
I feel drawn toward one of these Worlds—Midgard, where the fires of life are bright and strong.
One of these Ferah-fires calls to me, I feel drawn to it. Drawn so forcefully that the salts within my misty, liquid being are coagulated by the energy of that fire into a Dwimor, an image that reflects my nature.
My Dwimor is pulled up, up, up into the Midgard world, and from there I can vaguely sense its impressions. Other souls and a Lichama gather around my Dwimor, attracted and bound by its alchemical salts. My Dwimor and these other souls and body become a Midgard being together.
Deep within my own wetland world of Hel, I sense the images of Midgard reflected down to me, like moonlight over water. The water quivers with World-Mother’s breath and beating heart, causing the images to shimmer, ripple, blend together, morph into other images.
In my settled place in the strange world of Hel, I gather these images and ponder them through the long years that my Dwimor dwells in Midgard. I know that in the end it will return to me here, bearing its treasure-hoard of images. I will use them to reshape my dwelling-place in Hel.
What will that new shape be like?
After you’ve meditated as long as you wish on these images, take a few deep breaths, stretch, look around the room, sip a drink and eat a pinch of salt or a little food. Re-engage with your personhood in Midgard. Saiwalo’s domain is an interesting place to visit, but it’s best not to spend too much of your Midgard time there!
Finish by raising up your Saiwalo token, and naming it if you wish. If it is something you wear, then you may wear it now. If you have no token, you can raise your cupped palms or put your hands to your heart to honor your Saiwalo.
Hail your Quest
Raise your ‘drinking horn’ and offer good words to your Saiwalo as you begin this mighty quest. Offer prayers to whichever Holy Ones you wish, for their help and Gods-speed on your journey. Sip from your ‘horn’ after each speaking. When you are finished, pour the rest of the drink into the blessing-bowl.
Blessing
Use the twig or your fingers to sprinkle liquid from the blessing-bowl around your altar, yourself, and your soul-token(s) if you have any.
Thanks-Giving and Closing Prayer
All-holy Gods and Goddesses, ancestors, good wights of this place, I offer thanks for your blessing and help with this new adventure I am undertaking: the exploration of my souls, and exploration of my soul-connections with the souls and spirits of other beings, including yourselves.
I take joy in my kinship with you, and with the Feorhcynn: with all that lives. May the frith among us all strengthen and deepen day by day, as I pursue the wisdom of my own souls, and share in the wisdom of others.
This rite is ended. I go forth now in frith, and bear gifts of wisdom and blessing with me, always!
If possible, pour the remaining liquid in the blessing-bowl out in a suitable place outside. If that’s not possible, you could pour it into the pot of a house-plant, or drink it all. If you must pour it down the drain, first say a prayer to the Earth-mother, asking her to accept this offering however it reaches her, and saying that you mean no disrespect to her by pouring it down the drain.
If you have a Saiwalo token, have a suitable container to store it in when you are not wearing or using it: a cloth bag or wrapper, a small bowl, jar, or box. Keep the container on your altar or other meaningful place.