Winifred Hodge Rose
This is a meditation based on my perceptions of our Saiwalo soul as discussed in my series on the “Alchemy and Ecology of Hel,” as well as my background research on Saiwalo discussed in “Hel-Dweller” and “The Soul and the Sea.” There I explain that Saiwalo is a soul which dwells in Hel, based on extensive research into old Heathen and other Pagan beliefs. I speculate that the great mythical Cow Audhumla, who shaped Buri from the ice and fed him and Ymir, is the ‘mother of Hel-World.’ She created Hel-World by transforming herself into this World, the ‘womb of souls’ as I perceive it, just as Ymir was transformed into the physical Worlds where physical beings arise. Saiwalo souls arise from this ‘womb of souls’ and connect us, as living beings, with the roots of the cosmos and the living World Tree.
In my thought it is our Ferah-soul, a soul born of trees and thunder, lightning and the fire of life, who calls part of Saiwalo-soul up from Hel into Midgard to ensoul a newly-conceived child. I write about this in “The Awakening of the Souls” and refer to it in this meditation.
This meditation won’t make much sense to you until you read through these articles. You may want to have water or another drink, a little salt or food, to help you return to Midgard after the Saiwalo meditation. Read through it before proceeding and decide whether this meditation is safe and right for you. Once you do that, prepare yourself for a deep meditation and proceed.
* * * * * *
Darkness, and silence. All is still. Time and space have no meaning.
There is cold on one side, 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 to myself 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, get up and walk around, and re-engage with your life 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!