Monday, March 25, 2019

Seidh is for Women

Sorry boys. Seidh is for women (and gay men). It always has been. I'm always puzzled when I meet hyper-masculine men, devoted to the old gods, leaders in their communities, and then they claim to practice seidh.

Doesn't it seem that if you're reconstructing an old religion, particularly one that prides itself on its scholarship, you might want to preserve its basics? Even if they conflict with your own prejudices? Maybe particularly if they conflict with your own prejudices.

The goddess Freyja was the first practitioner of seidh. It's one of the arts of women, probably because it's association with spinning and weaving. The practitioner (seidkona = seidh woman) would use magic to foresee the future, then re-weave that strands of destiny. We don't understand much about how it worked originally, but it likely involved a ritualized act of spinning and very likely also had some sexual element, perhaps including penetration.

I've seen it suggested that in a warrior society the use of magic might have been seen as unmanly. A real man would confront his adversaries with force of arms, not sneak around with magic. It's an intriguing idea but I would want to see clearer evidence.

In our modern world there is nothing unmanly about weaving or spinning, and no shame to being gay, but in something that involves re-creating their religion we might prefer to preserve the old ways. The Rígsþula §28 says Jarl was taught the runes by his father Rig. Modern men who want to practice magic should be leaning on that passage as their authorizing verse.

Update

January 27, 2021: Jackson Crawford has a new video about Norse attitudes to predicting the future (see below). "The Norse have a really weird attitude toward knowing the future. It is awesome and a mark of your incredible wisdom if you can do it accidentally, without trying. But if you try, you're at minimum a weirdo, and probably a foreigner if you're a woman, and you're a pervert and among the worst people living if you're a man."

More Information

Revised January 27, 2021


at No comments:
Labels:

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Neo-Shamanism

Modern shamanism is very problematic. Staunch defenders and rabid detractors. My eyes glaze over. The debate typically resolves around opposing ideas that the word shaman originated in a very specific cultural context so must not be (or can be) used for analogous practices in other cultures. I don't find that kind of formalist argument very persuasive. In fact, in general it strikes me as the kind of argument often favored by shallow scholarship across the board.

One of the dimensions I think many people are missing is that there has been a sea change in the way New Age people deal with the past. The Boomer generation (often called the Old Hippies as a lighthearted reminder) is still very often focused on philosophies. They choose up sides. They're Buddhists or Theosophists or Wiccan or whatever. But always something.

On the other hand Millennials are often indifferent to ideological systems. They tend to focus on the tools. They like crystals, tarot, astrology, I Ching, meditation, or whatever. They want things they can use to do something they want to do.

I think the reason this is significant for shamanism is that the word has become a shorthand for a cluster of techniques that help the practitioner become their own healer. And at the same time it's a reminder that many of our ancestral cultures seem to have had village healers who can be plausibly argued to have been similar to American Indian medicine men. From that carefully worded sentence, one takeaway might be that neo-shamanism gives Americans their chance to copy American Indians without engaging in cultural appropriation.

If it can't be called shamanism then someone, somewhere had better find and popularize an alternative word. It's too useful to give up.

More Information

Updated o add link.


at No comments:
Labels:

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Frigg is Freyja

Frigg is Freyja. I'm sure of it. I've been sure of it since my teens. I don't know how I became associated with this idea among my friends. Maybe I've just been a bit on the vocal side. But I am associated with it, and I accept that. I'm even judgmental about people who disagree with me on this issue, and I'm okay with that too.

So you can imagine how pleased I was the other day when Jackson Crawford (my favorite Colorado cowboy but really Old Norse Specialist at University of Colorado) published a video Frigg and Freyja, where he looks at the arguments. He does say the majority position among experts is probably that the two goddesses are different in the late Norse tradition. But then he gives good arguments against it.

The essential idea is that Odin's wife Frigg might originally have been the goddess of love and sex, as well as the domestic household goddess. Freyja, which means lady, might have been her title. Then in late Norse times, at least in some areas, she became separated into two different goddesses.

Probably the main argument is the Frigg is married to Odin (Óðinn), while Freyja is married to Óðr. These are essentially the same name. Further, both Óðinn and Óðr are noteworthy for taking long trips and being absent from their wives for long periods of time.

The elements that convinced me are more domestic.

Freyja chooses half the dead, and Odin gets the other half. To me this small detail strongly implies they are husband and wife, but makes almost no sense if they are not. In one story Odin favors the Vandals while his wife Frigg favors the Lombards (Winnilers). To me, this is an obvious sort of story in a world where they are also dividing the dead between them.

Then too, Freyja was the first practitioner of seidh magic, which she taught to Odin. Seidh was a shamanic magic that was considered unmanly (ergi), probably because it was centered on spinning. It's easy enough to understand why Odin, that master of magic, would want to learn and use it (to predict and influence the outcome of battles), but I think not so easy to understand why Freyja would teach it to him unless she was his wife.

After Crawford published his video I thought it would be worth spending some time catching up on "current thinking" among Norse neo-pagans. I was pleased to find in one of Arith Härger's videos (The Divine Lady Freyja) an explanation of how the goddess might have become separated into two different characters. It's Härger's idea that it might have facilitated conversion to Christianity if Frigg, the king's wife and the model of domestic virtue, was analogized to the Virgin Mary, thus emphasizing the virtue of married women, while sexy Freyja was demonized.

Arith makes the point they were the same everywhere except the Norse.

I like to point to Ynglinga saga §13 as proof "Freyja alone yet lives". What the passage really says is "Freya alone remained of the gods" (after the death of Frey).

Iain Moncrieffe believed the kings at Uppsala (Sweden) were ritual incarnations of Frey, married successively to the goddess Freyja, from whom they derived their right to the throne. Frey and Freyja were children of Njörd and his unnamed sister. (I think it's obvious she must have been Jörd. That kind of rhyme permeates Norse genealogical myth.) If so, and I think there is some evidence centering around Brísingamen, then it seems this must have been either an earlier tradition or a regional variation. And what then of Freyja? Odin and Jörd were the parents of Thor. I've never been able to puzzle out whether Odin then married Jörd's daughter Freyja or whether in some way Jörd and Frigg might be the same person, and also still have Frigg be the same person as Freyja.

More Information

Revised to add links.


at No comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

On the Edge of the World

Our ancestors lived on the edge of the world, and they knew it. We who live in the European diaspora place ourselves at the center. We'r...

  • On the Edge of the World
    Our ancestors lived on the edge of the world, and they knew it. We who live in the European diaspora place ourselves at the center. We'r...
  • Indigenous Religion
    I like this post about indigenous religion by ReligionForBreakfast. There are some important points here. My neo-pagan chums often have a we...
  • LARPing tribalism
    I don't understand the reason so many modern heathens and neo-pagans are drawn to fantasies of re-creating antique tribalism. I don'...