Winifred Hodge Rose
There are so many reasons for us to learn soul lore, learn the mysteries of our own souls. The two reasons I’ll be talking about now are “Identity” and “Connections with multiple Worlds.”
“Who am I?” is a core question that religions and philosophies throughout time have sought to offer guidance about.
I think that in many cases, especially with religions, there are subtle and not-so-subtle efforts to guide people toward answers that help to support the status quo of the religious establishments, rather than promoting the full blossoming of the individual person.
In our case, with Heathen soul lore, there really isn’t a religious power structure that would cause us to skew our own answers to this question, “who am I?” We have a lot of freedom to find our own paths, which is as it should be.
The approach to Heathen soul lore that I have researched and explored should not be regarded as “gospel truth,” as something that must not be questioned. It is not something that you are required to conform to.
Heathen soul lore, as I teach it, is intended as an explorer’s map, a fallible and preliminary sketch of vast landscapes of being that can be seen and explored from many different directions.
What I offer is not “dogmatic marching orders.” It’s the opening of a door. It’s the calling of a horn over the far horizon. It points a way toward discovering who each of us truly is, but it does not dictate what the answer is.
I’ve described a number of different souls, based on clues from the Heathen past, that I believe we each have. Each of these souls is a complex individual.
The household or soular-system that these souls form together, within each of us, is yet more complex, and more unique to each of us individually. And it gives rise to our Self, a unique entity sung into being by all our souls, during this life in Midgard.
We experience this complexity within ourselves and others, every day; and within society at large. Even within our self as a single person, we have complex and contradictory needs and desires, goals, and influences upon us.
Ever since I started studying Heathen soul lore, this quotation from the American poet Walt Whitman keeps popping up in my mind. It’s something my Dad used to quote to us kids when we complained that he was being contradictory.
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” –Walt Whitman (1819-1892).
“I am large, I contain multitudes.” Yes: this is what Heathen soul lore tells us. We are large, complex, contradictory beings: not simple, not limited, not uniform, not regimented.
We are not here to be slotted into religious agendas, or any other agendas. We are too ‘large’ for that.
Being a person is challenging. The answer to the question “who am I?” is rich, deep, multi-stranded, rooted in our personal past, and in the transpersonal past, and it is ever-evolving.
“Who am I?” reaches through Time for the answers. And it reaches through Space, through physical and metaphysical Worlds. Our answers hang upon the World-Tree, and float within the Well that underlies it. “Who am I?” touches more Worlds than our own Midgard.
Each of our souls has characteristic connections to certain Otherworlds as well as to our physical world. These connections form world-paths that we can explore, not as intruders or strangers, but as true dwellers within those worlds through our inherent soul-connections.
Our Ferah-soul is connected with both physical and metaphysical Nature: with the emanations and powers of the Earth and Sky across many layers and realms-of-being rooted here in Midgard. Ferah-soul promotes Heathen piety, in the sense of wanting to make and maintain connections with our Deities, and bridge the worlds between us.
Our Ahma-soul arises from, and dwells within, the great, ever-renewing powers of creation, the primal roots of the Worlds.
Our Ghost-soul, by its nature, is related to the personal Gods and Goddesses, and to their own realms and dwelling-places. The power of Wode flows through our Ghost: Wode that stems from the realms of Ahma, passes over the bridge to the God-realms, and from there leaps into Midgard through our own powerful Ghost-mind.
Our Hama-soul infuses our Lich-Hama, our living body, with energy, speech, movement, skills, and charisma. It is the vital interface between our other non-physical souls, physical Midgard, and the social world of human activities and interactions.
Our Aldr-soul nourishes us with metaphysical energy and uses this to increase our vigor and extend our lifespan. It is our body in time, as our Lichama is our body in space. Aldr is the interface between us, the Norns, and their Well. It connects our ørlög, which is pooled in their Well, with the timing and unfolding of events in our Midgard life.
Our Mod-soul is power and energy that expresses itself through our body, mind, emotions, character. It arises from the elemental powers of Midgard, roots in our Lich-Hama, and links us with the Mod-powers of Nature, and of the Deities, Jotnar, Alfar, Dwarves, Landwights. As with Wode, our personal Mod-soul can form a bridge between ourselves and these other Mod-filled beings and their Worlds.
The Hugr-soul survives after death as an ancestral soul. Ancestral souls are beings which our living Hugr can contact and communicate with. Hugr is also a soul which periodically reincarnates. Through our living Hugr-soul, we can interact with the worlds of the departed. We can also reach through our living Hugr to learn more of our own Hugr’s past lives, and the world of the past. And Hugr is a hunter of hidden knowledge. Without my own Hugr as my guide and seeker, I could not have researched and developed the deep mysteries of Heathen soul lore.
Our Sefa-soul, our sense of being a Self, is created by the energies of all our other souls interacting together. Our Sefa-self is a song, and the singers are our souls. As such, Sefa is intimately connected with all our other souls. As our ‘self’, it can share in the experiences of each of the other souls and their connections to other Worlds. It is also the soul most invested in all our relationships with others.
Our Saiwalo-soul arises from, and dwells within Hel, a World which itself arises from the primal powers of creation. Hel is the Womb of Souls. And it is a spiritual wetland where the Saiwalo-souls, over long periods of time, purify the wastes of the Worlds that filter down into Hel, and provide fresh spiritual Water of Life to fertilize all the Worlds. Through our Saiwalo-soul, we participate in these essential cosmic processes of Hel.
Do you see now, why I keep using words like “explore, adventure, quest, journey” to describe the path of Heathen soul lore? It really is these things!
The question “Who am I?” leads us not only into the complex natures of our own souls, and the Self that is formed from those souls.
“Who am I?” also links us with other Worlds and the Beings, powers and energies that inhabit them. We are linked with those powers, beings, and worlds, through our own souls. We are not strangers to these worlds.
We can explore them, interact with them, learn from them, work with them, share experiences with the beings there.
We are each a rainbow bridge. Our own souls form the colors of this rainbow. We ourselves link Midgard with the Otherworlds, and with the challenging but life-giving Beings, powers and energies of those Worlds.
“Who I am,” who you are, is something far greater than you may ever have imagined! I invite you to set forth on this great adventure!