Laurie Asra Sottilaro
Source: Hel
Type: Life-soul
Keywords: images, shade, phantom
Other Language Synonyms: Seola, Sawol, Sál, Sele, Sawl
Spheres: alchemy
Afterlife: Dwimor takes its gathered images and returns to Hel
Patrons: Holle, Hel, Rán?
Care and feeding: Attention paid to images, preferably positive ones, or positive spin on negative ones.
Foothold: the phantom image of our body
Interface: Indirect, through the actions the images it collects prompts us to take.
Concerns: Unlike the other souls, this one is focused almost entirely in Hel, and in the images that are its collection of treasure that it brings back to Hel. This soul sends a Dwimor to Midgard which begins to assemble the other souls at conception and through birth, then collects the images that impact our life, and returns those images back home to the Saiwalo, which itself remains in Hel.
Runes / Bindrune: Hagalaz, Othala, Eihwaz, Sowilo, Ingwaz, Berkano, Kenaz
Awareness: images, its work and home in Hel
Notes:
Images of Saiwalo
Saiwalo is not like the other souls in the soular system, in that it doesn’t really take part in living, as the others do. “Seola / Sawol / Saiwala was an afterlife soul, with little involvement in Midgard life except in keeping the body alive by its presence … it naturally heads to Hel after physical life, where it continues existing as an individual being often known as the ‘shade’ … It is not as involved in our personality and Midgard activities as many of our other souls are, except in one important way: it is the source of our ability to create images in our ‘mind,’ or actually in our Saiwalo soul, whence our mind can access them … In the case of Saiwalo, its characteristic way of action is ‘imaging’ and populating our imagination with these images. These images then shape our perceptions and reactions … PTSD, the uncontrolled eruption of terrible images into one’s awareness, reflects a type of spiritual injury to the Saiwalo soul in addition to its physical dimensions. So much of what we perceive, think, feel, and act upon is rooted in and motivated by these images in our minds. And yet, my sense of our Saiwalo is that it is the generation of images itself, and not the resulting thoughts, emotions, and actions, that forms Saiwalo’s primary activity … its role in Midgard is passive: generating, absorbing, and transmuting images according to its own inner processes, which are rooted in Hel” (Rose 2021 337-9).
Saiwalo Life
“When the spark of Ferah ignites in the womb, Saiwalo senses the new Ferah and rises up to meet it. Working together, fiery Ferah and watery Saiwalo pull Saiwalo’s salty crystals out of solution and condense them into a Dwimor, Saiwalo’s gift and its foothold within the newly conceived infant in Midgard. Thus are their powers earthed in Midgard life” (Rose 2021 385) The Dwimor provides the matrix to hold together the new being, while the other life-souls provide the life-force. There are references in the Bible where the Holy Ghost enters either Mary (impregnation) or Jesus’ corpse (resurrection). This is not a Saiwalo thing, it is something completely different. On the surface it may seem similar, but although “Saiwalo is also traditionally considered a life-soul, whose departure from the body coincides with death, yet unlike the other life-souls, it is not clear from the oldest lore in what way Saiwalo contributes to life” (Rose 2021 448).
Saiwalo is not involved with Midgard life, nor personality, therefore it has no compound words to give us extra insight. Anglo-Saxon has living souls as ‘besouled’ or ‘soul-bearing’ using ‘Sawol’, and life is considered ‘the Sawol’s treasure hoard.’ “During life, Saiwalo / Dwimor is shadowy and detached, not heavily involved in our Midgard activities. Dwimor is busy absorbing images from Midgard, and transmitting images from Saiwalo into Midgard. It is gathering its ‘sawol-hoard:’ a word used for ‘life’ in Anglo-saxon, and a word I like to use to describe what Dwimor is doing during our life in Midgard: gathering its soul-hoard of image-treasures” (Rose 2021 415). Similarly, death is called ‘Sawling’ or ‘Souling’. Saiwalo is seen as the shade sinking to Hel; “the Seola souls are seen as independent beings continuing their existence after death, as entities gathered together in Hel, and can be spoken of in plural form” (Rose 2021 392). The words for the other souls don’t have plural forms. Christian influence changed the word ‘Seola’ quite a bit. By the time of Beowulf, the warriors were ‘seeking Grendel’s soul,’ to release it, and at Beowulf’s death, the author referred to Sawol again, for release at death.
Saiwalos in Hel don’t ‘live,’ they exist. “‘Life’ is not simply a ‘condition;’ it is a substance that we possess while we are in Midgard, with all our souls together” (Rose 2021 415) “‘Life’ itself is substance, energy, flow, ensoulment, interaction with the powers of nature at all levels within Midgard space-time… Saiwalo itself is not directly involved with the flow of life-energy” (Rose 2021 398). When Christians tried to explain their philosophy to heathens, the concept of a soul existing after death was easy, but the problem was that Seola cannot have ‘life.’ They got around it by translating it as ‘everlasting light’ instead. According to Christian translations, the Ferah is held on to after death and gives life to the Seola. But in Hervör’s Saga, the Saiwalo was hale and healthy without Ferah being retained. “‘Life’ is bestowed by the presence of Ferah” (Rose 2021 402); yet we know from Beowulf, first Ferah is laid aside, then Saiwalo can return to Hel. ‘Life’ and Saiwalo are simply incompatible, and yet it is also necessary for life. How does this work? “Here, I use alchemical metaphor to describe my own view of how Saiwalo maintains life within us during our time in Midgard” (Rose 2021 448).
The Dwimor
“I think that Saiwalo is a deep dwelling being, rooted in its ecosystem, which is Hel. I think that the flitting shades or phantoms of the dead, which are referred to in the Germanic languages using words derived from Saiwalo, are actually image-projections sent out from these Hel-dwelling Saiwalo beings. I called these images Dwimors, from Anglo-Saxon gedwimor, meaning a phantom or apparition, to distinguish them from Saiwalo itself for purposes of discussion, though I see Saiwalo and Dwimor as one being in essence. Here is my vision: once Saiwalo is ready to send forth a new Dwimor-phantom into Midgard to form the spindle around which the other souls will gather, it begins an alchemical process. It separates out the salt from itself, which condenses and crystallizes into the Dwimor, the phantom that Saiwalo projects into Midgard as our earthly soul, who bears our unique physical image… Saiwalo sends up a fountain, which is salt at its lower level, then at the upper level separates into a salt being, a crystallized soul image, floating on an upwelling tide of sweet water… This mirrors the action of the Dwimor as it is condensed and sent forth from Saiwalo, rising through a fountain of sweet water… that sweet water of Saiwalo’s upper extension wells up into Holle’s well or pond, carrying with it the crystallized Dwimor, Saiwalo’s projection into Midgard, for Frau Holle to draw out of her well.
She takes this Dwimor-spindle and twirls it, and the threads of our other souls wrap themselves around it, conforming to the Dwimor, the phantom image which Saiwalo projects into Midgard as a pattern for a new, unique being” (Rose 2021 381-382). “The Dwimor, projected into Midgard, provides a matrix which attracts and holds together all of our other souls during our life in Midgard. … This image is imprinted into our Hama-soul during gestation, which it uses as a blueprint for developing our physical characteristics, our Lich-Hama. After death, our Dwimor or phantom retains our physical image” (Rose 2021 341). “Saiwalo itself remains in Hel, but is tied to, and in communication with, its earthly body through its projection, the Dwimor phantom, which is also called by ‘soul’ words in the various Germanic languages” (Rose 2021 383).
“My sense of our Saiwalo is that it is the generation of images itself, and not the resulting thoughts, emotions, and actions, that forms Saiwalo’s primary activity… its role in Midgard is passive: generating and absorbing images according to its own inner processes, which are rooted in Hel” (Rose 2021 457). “Saiwalo-Dwimor values images for their energy-density, their intensity, rather than valuing them as positive or negative the way a living human would” (Rose 2022 305). “Dwimor, and Saiwalo, do not have the abilities of evaluation and judgment. Saiwalo generates images, Dwimor absorbs and transmits images, but neither of them chooses the images for these activities. Images float up from Hel like bubbles, entering into our Midgard minds through our Dwimor… all of the imagery that we are exposed to coheres in our Dwimor, with its function of providing a grasping, salty matrix to hold all the aspects of our living-being together.
Dwimor can’t sort out healthy from unhealthy images… such sorting and choosing is not within its abilities; it just holds on to everything it encounters… our own health and well-being in Midgard are maximized when our souls capable of judgment take on the responsibility of sorting through and winnowing the images that our Dwimor collects throughout every day and night. The use of critical thinking, and many types of spiritual and mental health practices are designed to do this, as well as treatments for more severe situations of imagery run amok, such as schizophrenia, PTSD, hallucinations and paranoia” (Rose 2021 458 – 460)
Hel’s Alchemy
“Saiwalo itself is always rooted and present in Hel, even while we are alive in Midgard, and absorbs powerful cosmic energy filtering up from Ginnungagap, Hvergelmir, and Niflheim, the realm of proto-being. These are the energies which form and feed our Saiwalos. These energies rise into Hel and are picked up and used by all the Saiwalos there … in Hel, all these energies and imageries mixed together, decomposing and recombining, fermenting and fertilizing, and from this seething soup of potential, Saiwalo forms the images, the language of imagination, that rise back into Midgard through Saiwalo’s Dwimor, its phantom projection into the Midgard plane, and shape the perceptions and experiences of Midgard beings … This resembles the activity of the Hagalaz Rune in its form as a seed crystal that thaws and freezes repeatedly … each time producing a new crystalline shape out of the formless, primal water. In my perception, these activities are a fundamental aspect of Hel’s function in the spiritual ecology of the Worlds” (Rose 2021 339).
Hel functions like a wetlands, processing waste into fertile soil. The Christian cultural concept of hell as a place of punishment from which the soul must be saved causes disruption both to our souls and to the world of Hel itself. “Hel and Saiwalos define each other, just as an ecosystem is defined by its characteristic components acting together, while the components function thanks to the interactions of the ecosystem” (Rose 2021 340). Hel, as well as Rán’s kingdom, contains places of beauty as well as places of torment. “In my perception, Saiwalos of folks from other beliefs shape their own regions of Hel based on what living people are taught and believe about the afterlife domains, including the Christians’ idea of hell as a horrible place of punishment.” The Gothic translator of the Greek Bible had to use a Hebrew word for the place of punishment, as there was no equivalent in his native language. Rather than a place of punishment, “Hel is a place of concealment, of refuge: it is the Hidden Land” (Rose 2021 342).
As Dwimor moves from Midgard to Hel, its perceptions are shaped by the images it carries. “If Dwimor has a lifetime’s worth of threatening, debased, ugly, frightful, painful, corrupt, meaningless or worthless images of what reality is like, as it heads back to Hel it will populate its surroundings with these perceptions, and experience them as real, both during its journey and after it reaches Hel. If living persons – relatives, loved ones – happen to be in contact with this Dwimor after death through dreams or visions, they also will perceive and be influenced by the Dwimor ‘s perceptions, and will assume that ‘this is what death and Hel are like'” (Rose 2021 462)
Worldwide images of a fiery hell and torment pollute Hel’s ecology. “So Hel ends up, over time, carrying a heavy load of negative imagery, absorbed through the negative experiences and beliefs of people during their lifetimes in Midgard. This imagery is not passive or static: it continues to bubble back up into Midgard through the Saiwalos and Dwimors of living people, perpetuating not only negative imagery in Midgard, but all the harmful beliefs, behavior, and deeds that people engage in, in reaction to this imagery. All of this establishes a vicious circle, in the most literal sense” (Rose 2021 463) But remember, Hel is ecologically like a wetland, processing and detoxifying waste, so while it will take time, these things can be corrected.
Alternatively, we can choose to consciously do something about these images…”We have the option, during our Midgard life, to take on the responsibility of ‘image-management,’ creating our own images of beauty, spiritual health, life enhancing power, richness of experience: gifts we can give not only to the Midgard-world, but to Hel and the Saiwalos as well. Every time we communicate, we pass images back and forth with each other…it is a lifetime’s work to learn to filter these, to take control of the images that we take in and accept, and images that we give out to others, so that we shape our Dwimor’s treasure-hoard, over the course of our life, into richness, power, beauty, meaningfulness and goodness” (Rose 2021 468-9)
Images of Hel
Hervör’s Tale, which may be one of the oldest Germanic writings currently existent, describes a passageway into Hel, and distinguishes between the Dead and the Draugar. The shade often appears in Old Norse tales, in the same manner as other languages refer to the Saiwala, Sawol, Sele, Seola, etc. It describes the Barrow as some place other than ‘earth up there,’ making it a location within the domain of Hel. In Brynhild’s Ride to Hel, she and her wagon were burned on Midgard, from where they then proceeded intact on the road to Hel. After Baldr’s nightmare, Odin too rides to the gate of Hel, and when he summons the völva, apparently she had to travel a distance as well to reach her summoner. When Baldr is slain, Hermoðr rides the road to Hel, and actually enters, finding Baldr and Nanna at a feast in a richly decorated hall.
In Eyrbyggja Saga, we see a mountain open and Thorstein Cod-Biter and his crew be welcomed among their ancestors. Skirnir’s journey contains many of the same motifs, as does Svipdag’s quest, and the tale of the girl falling through the well to Frau Holle’s land. Many tales of Hel or goddesses of that place describe the entrance or the goddess herself guarded by dogs. Themes of these tales include gaining hidden treasures and arcade knowledge, and through them, power; finding one’s ‘soul mate;’ and fascination of the imagination.
The Waters of Saiwalo
‘Saiwalo’ may come from *saiws, a body of water. It may also be related to Saami ‘saiva’ per Weisweiler, which in some areas means a freshwater lake, or a ‘holy or sacred lake’ with 2 layers, and a ‘smoke hole’ connecting them. Ancestral spirits called saivo also lived there, “and Saami customs were heavily focused on interaction with their saivo-ancestors… Saivo or Sajvo are considered to be holy and well-meaning humans and certain animals, while the general world of the dead, jabmi-aimo, also includes ill intentioned and dangerous spirits” (Rose 2021 371). Unborn babies are also found in bodies of water, from which the storks fish them out and deliver them. Other sources that probably drew from Weisweiler show *saiwaz as ‘from the lake.’ The Wassermann (waterman) can also bring babies, in German lands, which may have helped the elder Heathen make the transition to Christianity via baptism.
Another image of death and rebirth through water comes at the end of Völuspá, where the Earth sinks into the water, then comes back out of it eternally green. “Anyone who has seen the sea has, I think, felt how that endless, restless, salty, mysterious expansive water echoes something deep within all of us: the unknown, dimly-seen, protean, shape-shifting water being that lies within our own depths, or within whose depths we ourselves lie…. I believe that Saiwalo partakes of the nature of salt water and of the sea. Salt water is heavier and denser than freshwater, and layers itself underneath the lighter lenses of fresh water. This reflects the double bottomed lake of Scandinavian folklore” (Rose 2021 380).
Saiwalo and the Afterlife
When contacting Dwimors in Hel, it sometimes seems as though it takes a while for them to wake up. This is because they are so caught up in their work it takes a while for them to refocus. In order to gain knowledge from them, it usually takes something for that knowledge to coagulate around, like a question. “Saiwalo’s ‘sleep’ is a productive state of ongoing alchemical transformation… but it is a different kind of activity than our afterlife Ghost engages in: less personally-oriented, more cosmic in nature” (Rose 2021 406).
“A Germanic afterlife-being is something else [vs. ‘alive’], something which is not involved with, nor characterized by, Midgard life and breath. Instead it comes into its own full nature and existence only after the body has died and the breath of life has departed” (Rose 2021 409). “It boiled down to a Heathen understanding that ‘to be alive’ meant ‘to be in possession of Life-souls and especially of the Ferah-soul.’ Once Ferah, Ghost with Athom, and the other life-souls departed, one simply could not be considered ‘alive.’ The powers, the energetic flows and substances, of ‘aliveness’ were gone. So when Ferah was gone from the corpse and from the ‘shade,’ the afterlife remnant, one could not speak of this shade or Saiwalo as possessing ‘everlasting life'” (Rose 2021 410)
“They didn’t say a person’s ‘soul’ went to Hel; instead they said the person himself or herself went there” (Rose 2021 408) “As people (after Christianization) were encouraged to shift from a Heathen focus on human life in Midgard, to a Christian focus on ‘being saved from hell and going to heaven,’ Saiwalo went from being an obscure, shadowy, remote soul being to being ‘The One-and-only Soul’ which must constantly be protected from the ‘sins’ that all the other Midgard-oriented souls, now demoted to soul-parts, supposedly commit every day during their time in Midgard” (Rose 2021 413).
Death itself is an interesting process, from the perspective of Saiwalo. “As it is leaving Midgard, the Dwimor undergoes another alchemical process, mirroring its condensation into salt at the beginning of its journey: that of sublimation… I believe that our Ferah-soul emits a flash of light and heat as it separates from our Lich and other souls at death, just as it does when it forms at conception…at death, we have the fire of fission: the explosive separation of that which had been fused together. I think that this fire of fission causes the sublimation of the Dwimor, transforming it from a metaphysically solid core which holds us together, into a waft of vapor that can be perceived as a phantom Spirit set loose from the body at death” (Rose 2021 450). This is known as Dwimoring.
“If we imaginatively put ourselves in the place of our own Dwimor as it is released from our body and heads back to Hel… we would be sublimated out of the physical body, no longer in the form of crystallized salt around which a living person coagulates, but now rising as a cloud, as sublimated vapor. Others who perceived us would see us as a phantom or apparition, and imagine we are an illusion. As we head back toward our Saiwalo and Hel, we would perceive a dim and twilight world around us. Separated from the other souls and body we shared life with in Midgard, and not yet joined with our Saiwalo in Hel, we would feel diminished, dwindled away from what we were in Midgard … our Dwimor’s senses and perceptions, no longer fortified by the Lichama, Ferah, and the other souls, would feel dizzy, dim, confused, beclouded, dozy, during the dying process and after leaving the body.
This is the Dwimor during the temporary state between its life in the physical body in Midgard, and its return to its Saiwalo in Hel. Dwimor is not a stand-alone soul, it is a phantom-form, a projection of the Saiwalo, and it cannot function well in its dwindled state when it is detached from the other souls and the Lich. Many accounts of afterlife experiences and observations are, I believe, told from the perspective of this Dwimor experience, and show Hel and the afterlife as Dwimor sees it at this stage of its existence” (Rose 2021 451-2).
“As it proceeds on its journey, approaching its salt-water Saiwalo origin, Dwimor gradually becomes more liquid in nature … as Dwimor sinks into metaphysical / elemental Earth, heading toward the underworld of Hel, it coalesces from an airy into a watery state. When Dwimor returns to its Saiwalo, it undergoes another alchemical process: that of precipitation … Dwimor bears its particles of imagery ‘in solution,’ dissolved within its salty-watery self, as it heads towards Saiwalo. When it reaches Hel, its horde of image particles is precipitated out into Saiwalo … I believe that Saiwalo catalyzes precipitation from its Dwimor by means of singing, that is, by vibration … I perceive Saiwalo’s singing as being similar to whalesong: long, deep, sonorous echoes under the sea, heavy on vibration … there is also a cooling effect as Dwimor sinks from the hotter, active plane of Midgard life, into the cooler, quieter plane of Hel, which promotes precipitation as well.” 460-1
Encounters with shades pepper Germanic folklore. Useful parallels are found in the Greek concepts of Psyche (Saiwalo) and Eidolon (Dwimor), from Homeric lore, which predated Christian influence. Referring to Beowulf, “a gast or ghost in this context is an otherworldly being roaming in Midgard, often a fully physical being, while a Sawol is a non-physical being attached to a physical being living in Midgard, which goes to an otherworld after death. There’s a very clear difference between ‘ghost / spirit’ versus ‘Saiwalo Soul’ here that’s important to keep in mind when studying Heathen souls” (Rose 2021 405)
“In my perception, Saiwalo is greater and stronger than a flitting shade; it surges and thrums with the fundamental, upwelling cosmic forces that arise from Hvergelmir and the Elivagar. Saiwalos are powerful: deep, slow, world-transforming souls and they are very unlike any image or being we are familiar with in Midgard … Saiwalo is a very deep-level being, not directly associated with Midgard itself, but only through its Dwimor or image. It is deeply rooted and settled in Hel, in my perception of it. I see it as the opposite pole to Ahma, our ‘high,’ transcendent Spirit-soul. Our entire being is anchored between these two non-earthly poles: Ahma in ‘high’ transcendence, Saiwalo in ‘deep’ transcendence … we are beings wrapped around the spindle formed by the connection between these two souls and their domains” (Rose 2021 455-6).
Wode (Fire + Air) comes from Ahma thru Ghost, Images (Water) come from Saiwalo through Dwimor, where the blending can form all sorts of results, from art to war. “Saiwalos, Dwimors, and their environment of Hel have a different feel to them [from Hugrs, who can be human-like]: they are imbued with mythic or fairy-tale overtones, archetypal, otherworldly characteristics, subtle and strange differences in light, color, sound, movement, etc, compared to what we are familiar with in Midgard. It’s harder to relate deeply to these beings on a personal level. Though they have great depth, their depths are not those of character, personality, experience, thought, emotion, as we experience them in Midgard. In the ways I just listed, they may seem superficial or detached from our Midgard concerns, perhaps taking a mild interest, or engaging with us for a short time, but we get a sense that they are not deeply engaged” (Rose 2021 477).
Transformations
Winifred thinks “that Mímir and his sister Bestla, the uncle and mother of Odin-Vili-Ve, were the two beings who grew under the arm of Ýmir, the first generation of cosmic offspring along with Borr son of Búri. She places Hvergelmir in the center of Ginnungagap, and its mist is Ahma, primal Spirit. Her “view is that Auðumla, as the Ur-Mother, transformed herself into Hel-world, the Womb of Souls, and that Germanic Goddesses connected with Hel-world are transformations or ‘daughters’ of her essence as well. She offers her transformed body as a place of concealment, sheltering, nourishment, a place where beings in the afterlife can go through their own transformational processes. Auðumla’s name means ‘The Hornless Cow of Plenty/Wealth,’ and that ties into the idea of Hel as a place of hidden treasure and wealth… as for Auðumla’s ‘hornlessness:’ cow’s horns are often considered to be a symbol of the moon in the feminine mysteries. In Hel, I perceive that there is no visible moon. Hel is the interior of Auðumla, the nourishing, hidden land, permeated by its own mysterious, unearthly light… Auðumla was formed out of salty ice, and fed by licking salty ice: she is a salt-being. Through Auðumla we can see Hel as containing alchemical salt and water, as well as elemental earth in the form of her body. This leads us to the next development: the arising of the salt-water Saiwalo souls in their earthy underworld of Hel” (Rose 2021 437-439).
“I view Dwarves as Master mod-power transformers, who began their existence as energy larvae absorbing mod, might and main from mighty Ýmir’s flesh, and condensing it within themselves… In fact, I like to think that it was the Dwarves, not the Deities, who initiated their own transformation once they had accumulated and refined enough mod, might and main from Ýmir to achieve this great work… if we accept the alchemical ideas I’ve laid out, then we must conclude that the Dwarves, feeding from Ýmir, also partake of the venom from which Ýmir is formed. In alchemical terms, the venom can represent strong acids and bases that have the power to dissolve various substances, and are also used in the dangerous processes for refining pure metals out of mixed ores. It’s wise to keep this ‘venomous’ or dangerous aspect of Dwarves in mind, when dealing with them: though they are wise and skilled, they must be dealt with cautiously. They are generally not ‘warm and fuzzy’ beings… the World of the Dwarves, full of riches and infused with danger, death and power, and the World of Hel, the Hidden Land of Saiwalo souls, filled with hidden wealth, power and mystery, have some significant overlaps that are worthy of exploration” (Rose 2021 441-2).
Heraclitus and Alchemy
There is a parallel but reversed alchemical process between the dwarves arising out of decomposing Ýmir, and Saiwalo souls condensing and coagulating from Hel (Auðumla). Heraclitus spoke of how souls are formed from water, and it appears to have direct bearing on the Saiwalo soul. Heraclitus said, “As souls (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 the soul. [Winifred’s translation of fragment DKB36] “I see this enigmatic saying of Heraclitus as a way of describing the process of the Saiwalo soul arising. First there is elemental earth, and this serves as a metaphor for Hel, the Hidden Land that metaphysically lies below the surface of our physical Earth. In a certain locus, earth ‘dies’ and transforms into elemental water, thus becoming like a water well surrounded and contained by earth. The water in this well is permeated by elemental Earth in the form of salt. This describes my perception of the Saiwalo soul, a salt-water being nestled within its earthy-watery ecosystem of Hel … Next, the water in the center of the well ‘dies’ and is transformed into a soul surrounded by water. This is a metaphor for our Dwimor: a salt-being condensed from and projected by our watery Saiwalo soul in the form of a phantom, which is our earthly soul-image. This water-well, surrounded by earth and condensing salt out of itself, is an image of a Saiwalo-soul condensing its Dwimor-projection in preparation for a new life in Midgard … the energy for Dwimor’s condensation and projection comes from our Ferah-soul, a soul aligned with elemental Fire and Earth. In my understanding, the Ferah-soul comes into being in Midgard when egg and sperm unite in the womb, during the process of conception, and Ferah’s coming into being is accompanied by an intense flash of lightning. The alchemical fire of Ferah’s conception provides the heat necessary for the condensation of a new, salty Dwimor-phantom to form from the salt-water Saiwalo soul grounded in Hel. The Dwimor rises up, a projection from its Saiwalo in Hel, and is drawn to join with the newly conceived Ferah-soul, the Fire of Life, to form the foundation of a new living person in Midgard … the flare of power that is released when Dwimor and Ferah merge gives rise to the Hama-soul, which is then imprinted with the spiritual image borne by the Dwimor” (Rose 2021 443-447)
Working with Saiwalo
“The process of crystallizing knowledge can occur in another way, as well, in my experience. We can open our spiritual perception to our own Saiwalo (it is inadvisable to walk into the widely populated, strange domain of Hel itself) and walk into our Saiwalo’s ‘hall’ or ‘landscape,’ bearing with us a symbol or image of something that is deeply mysterious to us, and about which we wish to learn more. Words and verbal questions are not useful, here within our own Saiwalo. Visionary images (using any or all of our senses, including ‘feeling’) are the medium of communication. We present this question-image within the hall or landscape of our Saiwalo, and prepare to ‘absorb’ the response. To do this, we can imaginatively take on the form of something that gathers and absorbs, like the soil of a landscape, a living sponge beneath the sea, a mountain meadow under a fall of snow, or a pool of water in the rain. We absorb the knowledge-essence that precipitates into us from our Saiwalo, and crystallize it within ourselves into an image that expresses this knowledge. This is our knowledge-seed, our treasure, our philosopher’s stone, but though we bear it back with us into Midgard, it will not be immediately available to us. It’s wise to take our time and put the seed or image through the alchemical processes I’ve outlined here, perhaps repeatedly, in order to unpack its rich nuances, its treasures of knowledge and beauty” (Rose 2021 487-8).
Possible Traits:
| Focused on images | Hallucinations |
| Obsession | |
| Paranoia | |
| PTSD | |
| Schizophrenia |