Wightridden
Contents
# |
Pt. |
Path of __ |
PP. |
0. |
Introduction |
-- |
1-42 |
I. |
Utiseta & Faring-Forth |
Meditation |
43-60 |
II. |
Recaning |
Ritual |
61-82 |
III. |
Heartbeat of the Worlds |
Rhythm |
83-123 |
IV. |
Greenwights |
Sacred Plants |
124-64 |
V. |
Finer Focus |
Ascetic |
165-220 |
VI. |
Body & Tree |
The Flesh |
221-87 |
VII. |
Blood & Fire |
Ordeal |
288-344 |
VIII. |
Open to the Divine |
[Possessee] |
345-96 |
0-II.
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0. |
Introduction |
-- |
1-42 |
pp. 14-15 wightridden
p. 14 |
"A volva or vitki was said to "ride" someone ..., causing ... bad dreams ... . Sometimes they would temporarily possess their victims and ... make them sleepwalk in a |
p. 15 |
panic ... . It wasn't unusual for someone who was "ridden" in this way to be ... naked outside their homes. Terms for magic-workers who did such things were kveld[-]rida (evening-rider), myrk[-]rida (darkness-rider), kald[-]rida (cold-rider), troll[-]ridur [Troll-rider]". |
|
"Another meaning of the term refers to the volva or vitki riding about on a magical spirit-steed to do such things, usually a wolf nor boar. ... Yet another refers to the "rider" being an aspect of the sender's own soul -- thus the term thrad[-]rida (thread-rider) ... . ... For some of us, the wights do come into our bodies and ride us to one extent or another; for all of us, they ride our Threads, and we are expected to deal with the Threads of our clients in turn." |
p. 21 [by E.V.] a visit to Hel-heim
"I was shown a table upon which rested many hearts of birds, beasts, fish, insects and other beings, all alive and beating. When I held my hand out over any one of them, I could see what kind of creature the heart belonged to. ... Hela told me that I was to choose one of these. I would become that ... . ... I found one which showed my own face. ... "I choose this," I said". |
pp. 27-9 the 8-Fold Way
p. |
# |
Path of __ |
consisting of __ |
27 |
1st |
Meditation |
[p. 28 uti-seta] |
28 |
2nd |
Ritual |
"mindful activities that are heavily laden with meaning" |
|
3rd |
Rhythm |
"drumming, dancing" |
|
4th |
Ascetic |
"purification ... sauna" |
|
5th |
Sacred Plants |
"henbane", et al. |
29 |
6th |
"the Flesh" |
"sexual energy as a way of opening one's self to the spirits." |
|
7th |
Ordeal |
"pain" |
|
8th |
[Possession] |
"direct spirit-possession, bringing the Gods or wights into the body for short period of time." |
pp. 33-4 uses for altered states of consciousness
p. |
# |
use |
|
33 |
1. |
"shamanistic divination ... as a theurgic key to open the Akashic Record ... . ... To do this, you need to have {Security-}Clearance to get in -- which comes from the {praeternatural} wights that you work {magic} with[al]". |
|
|
2. |
"{Occultly} Seeing into people into order to evaluate their physical and/or psychic health." |
|
|
3. |
"Hearing the messages that the Gods and wights have". |
|
34 |
4. |
"Learning the skills that you need to get from the Gods and wights who are agreeing to train you. |
{Such "learning" is typically being empowered to receive information from those Gods and wights in any particular case being enquired into.} |
|
|
Some might come to you in dreamtime ... . They may want to take you places {in dreams}, or do things with your astral body {while projecting it}". |
p. 35 teachers : mortal & divine
"The few of us who are being ... given attention -- by the Gods and wights are struggling to learn enough to form a critical mass of information. We are benefited by the modern luxury of mass communication, which allows me to publish books ... . This allows us to compare and contrast our experiences". |
"Spirit teachers are wonderful ... . They can teach us things that no human being can teach, in ways that can't be passed on by humans. They have an uncanny ability to see into us and figure out ... honing the lesson to our needs." |
p. 37 verification of personal divine revelation
1st |
"write it down". |
2nd |
"do divination on the matter". |
3rd |
"have someone uninvolved do s divination." |
4th |
"ask the Gods to provide an obvious {evident} omen". |
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I. |
Utiseta & Faring-Forth |
Meditation |
43-60 |
p. 45 u`ti-seta
"Utiseta , which literally means "sitting-out" ... gives ... the spirit-worker going to a quiet and lonely place, usually far from habitation, ... in order to commune with Gods and wights ... . |
Utiseta {literally, 'out-setting'} can ... become "faring forth", or "journeying", which ... is modernly referred to as "astral projection". This occurs when a specific part of the soul leaves the body and travels to Otherworlds (or to other places in this world) while still being connected to the physical form." |
pp. 46-7 [by L.H.] mound-sitting
p. 46 |
"We do moundsitting, ordinary utiseta, and going under the cloak ... . ... |
|
p. 47 |
Then you contract your attention inside yourself. ... Contract your attention so that ... you're just trying to find the core of the center of your being, all the way down. Really compress it ... . ... Then you expand your attention outwards, but you go past the boundary of your body, so now you're experiencing all ... that's around you, but not as separate from you any more. And at that point, often it's easier to commune with the wights ... . ... So if you do this thing on a mound, or inside a faery hill, then you're likely to talk to them. ... |
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|
How Faery-mounds work : You just go for a doze on some ... rock on some wild and green hill, and if you're near a faery place they'll suck you in." |
{This is a more a praescription of how to obtain a dream about an enchanted mound in Fae:rie-land, than of how to locate a reputed sidhe-mound in the material waking-world.} |
pp. 48-9 ond
p. 48 |
"Breath is ... In Old Norse, the word ond". |
{cognate with Middle Cymry /ENeiT/ (modern /ENiD/) 'soul'} |
p. 49 |
"the breathing techniques learned for voice training and the breathing techniques taught by yogic practitioners were not all that different, and could be combined with ... magic ... galdr -- singing your intent out with your breath." |
p. 50 yawning in order to in-breathe (in-spire one's self with) the spirits
"In both Old Norse accounts of the vo[,]va[-]s and century-old accounts of Siberian shamanism, the spirit-workers are referred to as "yawning" periodically throughout their public performances. According to the Yukaghirs, it is a way of "breathing in" the spirits and their messages, ... |
in Hrofs saga kraka the vo[,]va Heid {Heidi} yawns at the beginning of her rite, and then again when asked each question." |
pp. 53-9 [by L.H.] spirit-journeying suggestions "From A Cosmic Diplomat"
p. 53 |
"I sit down, I punch in the coordinates of where I want to go on my intergalactic navigating machine, and press "Go!" ... I started traveling a lot with the twelve directional kings {praesiding deities of the Maha-yana 12-direction system?}. ... my teachers were saying, "You have to go see this King and talk to him." ... She said, "Well, just intend |
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p. 54 |
to meet him, and go, and rest will be taken care of." So I closed my eyes and intended to meet him, and suddenly I was face to face with this ebony-skinned man {Mara?} on a blasted desert landscape." "Sometimes you have to really slow yourself down a lot to talk to certain entities. Things like boggarts and tree spirits don't have the same time cycles." |
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p. 55 |
"Always know exactly where {in praeternatural realms} you're going. What is the person {divinity} that you're meeting supposed to look like? Have we met them before?" |
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p. 56 |
"There are certain [supernatural] spaces that are time-sensitive, and if you go into them, going back into your body can be a bit weird. Most of the time when one journeys out, when you come back your subtle {suks.ma} body {kaya} just fits right back into your physical vehicle, but if you visit places that are quite close to the manifested plane, then the movement of the earth affects your subtle body still {nevetheless}, because you're quite close to it and its influence, so when you come back ..., your body is slightly rotated from where your subtle body was, and you can come in feeling funky. In the beginning, I would come in and feel like "Eew! {Phew!} Something really feels gross and wrong and out of place and twitchy." I would have to go out of the body again and realign and come back in. You can definitely have a bad landing. Then I was taught to immediately write down everything, and make sure you're thoroughly back in your body -- especially before you have to go and drive ... . Make sure to close the door after you, because {praeternatural} things will want to come in after you, into the material plane. ... Just imagine the biofilter they use in Star Trek when they teleport people, to make sure that nothing comes in that shouldn't be there. ... |
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p. 57 |
You can come back from these things very much out of sorts, and then you have to spend ... time doing elemental rebalancing". "to avoid getting lost ..., really good knowledge of where you're going is important, and don't be going into places where you're not planning to go, and don't travel to places you don't know yet. |
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Get a tour guide". |
{a shaman's supernatural spirit-guide for spirit-travel} |
|
p. 58 |
"First, before you even think about traveling in Otherworlds, ... try to build up your astral stamina. Our people take six to nine months of building up their astral vehicles with breathing and meditative exercises to the point where they {the "astral vehicles "} are actually quite strong. In the northern tradition, such exercises might be sitting with the trees and breathing up and down them and generating a heartwood and really firm bark, |
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if you're a tree kind of person". |
{if a person having a tree as nahual (nagual)} |
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"Then, when {Otherworldly} traveling, make sure that you have got some armor ... before you go. But make sure that any armor and weapons are hidden, so that you look harmless. ... |
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p. 59 |
And if you're traveling to places where you're likely to get hit heavily, wear armor ... . You can wear armor that doesn't show up. ... You can also travel in other forms -- something that's less likely to get damaged. So for example, maybe you decide to travel as a tortoise". |
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II. |
Recaning |
Ritual |
61-82 |
pp. 63-4 ritual involving hallowing their personal worship
p. 63 |
"My own preference is to light a recaning stick of mugwort and purify the space ... . Then I sing the last verse of the Song of the Nine Herbs, which wards the directions (that ritual is at the |
|
p. 64 |
end of this section [pp. 80-2]), sit, and ground and center. If I am feeling particularly unfocused, I will sing |
|
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my personal power song." |
{This is especially AmerIndian.} |
pp. 64-5 other practitioners' rituals involving hallowing their personal worship
p. 64 |
[by J.M.] "A candle is lit (Loki likes [fluid-fuel-]lighters, Hel uses matches) ..., and I spend a few minutes talking with the Gods." |
p. 65 |
[by M.C.] "I put down a cloth of an appropriate colour, light candles -- I like the ones in coloured tubes so the light itself is coloured ... . I get some incense going ... . I ... put on some music or beat a drum, or chant suitable verses. I fill the area with light, colour, fragrance and sound." |
pp. 67-8 [by Ari, seidmadr] reasons why spirit-workers ought to do daily devotions
p. 67 |
1. |
"It feeds your soul." |
|
2. |
"It creates mindfulness." |
|
3. |
"those times that the Gods seem to have left you in the lurch, the silent times ... when our signal clarity is down ... . ... that's harder for us, the ones who have the Gods and wights jabbering into our ears; harder for us to endure that sudden silence ... . During these times, the daily devotions give you something ..., so that when They {the Deities usually "jabbering"} come back into focus again -- as They always will -- you have not lost your path". |
p. 68 |
4. |
"It gives you a tiny island of spiritual connection". |
|
5. |
"It strengthens your connection to the Gods and wights". |
pp. 68 & 70 opening to deities
p. 68 |
"The most common job in group rite is opening the door to the Gods and their energies ... . ... |
p. 70 |
The Thing could take days of ... hailing the Gods and then speaking." |
p. 71 sowing & harvest
"the shamans still ruled ... even after the onset of agriculture, such as the Siberian "white" and "black" shamans, where the former presided over the spring sowing and the latter over the fall harvesting." |
pp. 73-4 [by A., seidhmadhr] vaettir-energies are transmitted to the audience in public ritual
p. 73 |
"We spirit-workers have a gift for channeling wight-energies, ... not just letting them speak through us. ... I can become an open door for the energy of the spirits to come into this world. ... |
p. 74 |
The only reason ... is to allow consenting people to connect with wights that they otherwise would never touch -- and that's an excellent reason, so stick to that". |
p. 79 [by G.K.] Northern-Tradition approach to ritual work
"I pray my Norse prayer beads almost daily and spend some length of time talking with O[`]din[n], Loki, Sigy[`]n et al. I also chant galdr nearly every day." |
pp. 80-1 recaning-song, for blessing mugwort-sticks
p. 80 |
"Keep in mind, Mugwort, what thou promised ... . First {thou art} called, oldest herb, Thou hast might against three and against thirty. ... This ... the first verse the Song of the Nine Sacred Herbs ... from the Lacnunga, ... I sing ... over my mugwort plants when I ask permission to cut them for recaning sticks (recaning is an Anglo-Saxon term ... cognate to reek) and then sing it again when I bind them into {bundles of} sticks ... . ... |
p. 81 |
When I want to recan the space later, I light the Mugwort stick and sing the last verse of the same Song, which wards the directions. ... If any poison comes flying ..., Then this poison from you I blow." |
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Raven Kaldera : Wightridden : Paths of Northern-Tradition Shamanism. Asphodel Pr, Hubbardston (MA), 2007.