II.3

Mastering Water

115-53

The mythic region Nifl-heim : "parts of it are lakes ..., part of it is frozen ice and snow ... . ...

Its well --

Hver[-]gelmir the Boiling Cauldron --

{Actually, this must be intended as not "Boiling" (seething), but rather bubbling (effervescent) water, alike to the Maori mythic Wai-ora-a-Tane, the effervescence whereof is said to energize souls of the dead.}

is the source for all the rivers of the Nine Worlds."

p. 117

"1. Learn to swim".

"2. Go to a place where the water flows over ... rocks. Watch it".

"3. Collect water from as many places as possible : From the ocean. From a lake. ... From a well ... . ... From a sacred spring. ... From

p. 118

many springs all over the world. (If you can't go to all these places, have friends bring or bring or send you the the water. ...) Put the water ... in bottles and keep them for sacred work. You will be told {by deities} how to use them."

"4. Cold is one of the Powers of Water, as my lesson with Kolga the Ice Maid taught me. Cooling oneself is ... about slowing down all the chakras. If you use any particular point, it's the one on the top of your head, feeling cold slowly work its way down your body. ... Sometimes you may have to do utiseta in a hot area and season.

5. ... undertand where your energy meridians are, and ... control the flow of ch[>]i along them."

"6. ... shapeshift into something aquatic. Many Saami shamans had a fish as one of their necessary astral forms (so did Loki, and the famous Duerg Andvari), and some ancient seidhworkers had whale forms. ...

p. 119

Whether it's whale, dolphin, seal, or any sort of fish, work ... with the help of an aquatic spirit guide".

p. 120

"Aegir and Ra[`]n rarely appear together, even though they are a couple : usually the [twain] come to me separately. ... Aegir is a homebody, keeping his castle ... . ... On the other hand, it is Ra[`]n who goes out on the daily patrol of the seas ..., and she can go anywhere just by pulling on a strand of her hair. ... Go to any ocean and call her, and she will come, instantly -- ...and expect her to take something from you ... . ... After all, her name means Robber."

spoken by Aegir : "All human life came from the sea, ... as figures drawn forth by giants from the waters and saved by Ber[-]gelmir by placing them in a tree, as four-legged fish and later small apes who came dripping out of the ocean."

p. 121

spoken by Ra`n : "You are allowed to take exactly the amount that you are always giving. ...

Someone will offer you a gift with the wrong strings attached ..., and you will suddenly stand dry-mouthed and dumb."

p. 123

"When the call was answered, it was the Nine Waves, the nine daughters of the sea god and goddess Aegir and Ra[`]n, who answered. I was told ... that I would have to come to them. I was told that I would have to make nine separate appointments at nine separate beaches, and that ... it had better be scheduled soon. ... . ... I

p. 124

ended up with nine important pieces of understanding ..., and nine power songs ... . ...

Each of the Nine Ladies ... had teeth and claws."

p. 125

"Crawling up from the surf, [was] the ugliest mermaid I'd ever seen. ... She would have been tall if she had been standing upright ..., and was powerfully built in the shoulders ... like an Olympic swimmer. Her breasts were long, hanging dugs, under necklaces of teeth and fishbone. She had a fishtail, but it looked like that of a shark, with a fin protruding beween her shoulder blades. She had very long hair, ... dark rusty red ... . Her face was

p. 126

broad and rather flat, with a very wide mouth full of rows of sharp pointed teeth ... . Her eyes ... pupils were slitted. ... Her tongue was bluish-purple ... . ... Her fingers were clawed. Her hips wriggled ... . ... She told me ... that I must take home ... a ... horseshoe crab ... shell".

spoken by Blo`dug-hadda : "They trickle down ... the pale spear {stalactite/stalagmite}-lined caves."

p. 129

"Himinglava is the youngest and prettiest of the sisters. ... She was long and slender and graceful with long curly hair of a chestnut-orange that glowed coppery ... . ... She had teeth, though, and claws, ... the wide face and mouth, the wide-set eyes. She giggled, ... and I saw that her lower half was a dolphin's tail. She is a fair-weather goddess".

p. 130

spoken by Himinglaefa : "This song will bring fair weather ..., but it won't last ... . ... Let it fly, so that it will want to come back to you."

p. 132

"She swam in a circle around me ... . Her face was more piched and her eyes more bulging than that of her sisters, and her fair hair was cut short ... . ... If Blodughadda had been shark and Himinglava dolphin, Hronn was eel. ... Hronn is Lady of the Whirlpool."

p. 133

spoken by Hro,nn : "You remember Her ladyship's bony knuckles clicking on your ribcage as She tore out your heart. ... If it paralyzes you, ...

you must ... go into the maelstro[,]m again, all the way to the bottom of the whirlpool. ...

{Entring in whirlpool which in the dreamworld is in the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of each of the great Siberian rivers, is the Siberian shaman's most usual entry into the shamans' section of the dreamworld (for power to perform shamanic curing).}

You walk and keep walking, you keep walking all the way to the bottom, and then you come out the other side."

p. 135

"Her hair was long and jet-black, and cast forward over her face ... . ... Her skin was pale, and she seemed to be wearing some garment made of white strands ... like a cape of string. It took me a while to realize that she was actually wearing a giant jellyfish as a garment, and its tentacles extended in all directions."

p. 137

song by Hefring : "Heartstrung, I am weeping, I am in tatters, rent and torn".

p. 138

"Bylga is plump and round, like a seal, and indeed the seal is one of her animals ... . Her hair is seal-brown and velvety-looking, and her round breasts are good-sized as well, contrasting with flap-breasted Hronn and skinny Hevring. Coral bits hung around her neck, from her ears, and were wound through her hair. ... She is the Lady of the Breaker ... . A tidal wave is, according to her, the doing of all nine of the sisters working together ... .

p. 139

Bylga is also about the life of tidepools and the coral reefs".

spoken by Bylgja : "First you drum it -- it's rhythm that ... gets faster, bigger, louder. Feel it like a tidal wave within yourself."

p. 141

"Unn is a slender, delicate mermaid, like Himinglava. Her mouth was smaller ... . Her face was more heart-shaped ..., and her hair was ... of light brown curls that ... fluffed out the moment she raised her head ... and shook it. Her fingers were long and tapered, like her delicate fishtail, and she was wreathed, neck and waist and arms, in strands of tiny shells that clinked and clicked. "They are for counting on," she said ... . She rotated slowly in the water ... . Of all the sisters, Unn's lesson was ... the most esoteric. ... Unn seems to have a close, friendly relationship with Ma[`]ni, the Moon-etinn. ... "I sing numbers to him, and he sings back," she said".

p. 142

spoken by Unn : "The sea is the keeper of all memory. ...

Can you change time if you go back? Of course you can. ... But you can feel the double layer of time. Be careful -- it's fragile. ...

Can you look ahead {into the future}? Yes you can, but then you have to deal with the Norns. ... My seabirds all understand this, although ... They can't keep enough of focus to do it, but they will notice when you do, and maybe try to follow you. ... Crows do too, although they use it for

p. 143

different things. This song will show you where you can go, what days and moments you can reach from each shore, each place. It will help you

pull the veil in,

{Her kredemnon ('veil') goddess Leuko-thea ('White Goddess') donated to Odusseus (Odusseia 5.299-312 -- UO, p. 20).}

pull in the other time."

{"sends his creation back into the world of time" (UO, p. 24)}

sung by Unn : "the gift of the gulls ...,

{Leukothea appeareth (GM 170.y) "disguised as a seamew."}

turn back the veil".

{"Odysseus throws the veil back into the sea, where Leukothea takes it back into her hands." (5.462) [MO, p. 113] -- similarly as the Lady of the Lake with Excalibur}

p. 144

"Duva was a pale figure wreathed in mists ... that slowly blew away as I listened ... . ... What I could see of her appeared to be slightly scaled and bluish, and her hands bore webbed fingers. ... Duva is the Lady of Islands, and she shows sailors the way to safe havens ... . ... She is both the keeper of everything that is hidden and the revealer of hidden things ... . One thing ... was how much she loved pearls. ... Duva wore strand after strand of pearls wound about her slender torso and through her long hair."

p. 145

spoken by Du`fa : "This is for when ... you are desperate enough for any haven. It will not take you home. It will take you to safety ...; the closest safety. ... What it will not do is show you ... the secrets of Wyrd and the Cosmos."

p. 147

"Kolga, Duva's twin and her elder sister by a few minutes, ...was bony and angular, her skin a pale grey-blue and her hair silvery-grey".

p. 148

mode of chanting to Kolga, for achieving bodily coolness at will : "As you sing the chant, focus on yur solar plexus. ... Find the right [musical] note to start on; it will be the note that sends a chill to that point of your body. ... You may have to sing it a few times, if it's a really hot day. ... Breathe that cold ... . Run it up and down your spine".

p. 150

"Ba`ra ... was an enormous mermaid ... . Hugely fat ..., great breasts bouncing in the water, long dark brown hair draped over her broad, muscular shoulders, which were also draped with hundreds of strings of beads. Her face was round and fleshy, with at least two chins, and a big crooked-toothy grin. Wide sea-dollar earrings dangled from beneath her draggled lock ..., and she carried ... the toothed jawbone of some enormous animal."

p. 151

"My pets, the whales --- they once came out of the sea and grew into predators on the land.

Then they came back into the sea and became predators there!"

{In biological genetics, whales and other sea-mammals are said to be descended from ancestors of hippopotamoi land-mammals.} {Ba`ra's statement may better apply to some other world or plane-of-existence, howbeit.}

"I have built ... to them -- a huge mobile made of driftwood hung with shells, figur[in]es, tiny bottles of seawater, shark's jaws, and many glass sea floats. ... We ... started the Cult of the Nine Sisters".

II.4

Mastering Earth

154-71

"The "curriculum" for mastering Earth ... deals with how the spirit-worker manages to bridge the gap between the Otherworlds and the physical world of their body ... . ... On a smaller scale, it is the element to work with for all magics involving money".

p. 155

1

"learn to develop casual and propitiatory friendships with local land-wights in preserved nature areas. ... Do utiseta and talk to them about what's going on in their neighborhood. Remember that not all land-wights will talk to you : some may be hibernating, ... Others may have relationships with their own human beings {i.e., with human beings who are residing on their land}, and may react territorially. ... Smaller land-wights can adjust to human speed of thinking, for a time anyway, but larger ones may live so such slower than us that they may have trouble communicating."

p. 156

2

"the spirit-worker who has any affinity at all with plants ... would do well to make the acquaintance of some plant spirits. As mentioned ..., there are two different sorts of spirits ... here -- the plant itself, and the plant's Grandparent Spirit."

3

"animal spirits are good allies to have ... . They can tell you things about

p. 157

Earth that you never knew ... . As part of mastering Earth, the spirit-worker should cultivate a relationship with at least two animal spirits ..., considering that they choose you rather than you[r] choosing them. ... One example of this ... classic combination of the noaide was a bird of some sort to help them fly to the upper world, a fish to help them swim to the lower world, and a reindeer to carry them in this world."

"Every time you have an orgasm, dedicate it to particular deity {convince a deity to accept the sensation of orgasm as imputedly experienced by that deity?}.

{This ritualistic dedication would apply particularly to mortal females. A mortal male would normally be more concerned with (instead of orgasm) making sure that the kissing and massaging which he is applying to a woman's body be accepted likewise by a divine goddess as putatively applied to that goddess's own body.}

That includes the ones that you give yourself.

{Why would a woman ever choose to give an orgasm to herself (i.e., by mere masturbation), if she hath every opportunity to dominate any male whom she might care to by commanding him to kiss at length every part of her body, and amusing herself by hurting him (by scratching, pinching, and biting) during the whole process?}

If it takes too much concentration to dedicate it just before it happens, dedicate it before the sex starts."

{Certainly a woman can command the man to perform beforehand any dedicatory ritual, accompanied with music (perhaps recorded), perfumes, etc., at a resplendent altar set with idols of ever-copulating deities. Constant recitation of the ritual invocations of deities to occupy the bodies of the principals during the erotic processes can be maintained either through audio-devices or by any congregation in attendance observing the sexual caerimony.}

p. 161

"Jord, the Jotun Earth Mother, came to me ... as ... I was sitting in the park ...,

my back against a maple tree. ...

{The maple-tree, with its sweet sap, is of use to humans in the same way as is the manna-ash-tree (Fraxinus ornus), whose sap is eaten as syrup ("ATI-EC"). Thus, because the manna-ash-tree is said to have dripped its syrup in Golden Age, the era of Kronos, therefore this goddess may be Rheia (the wife of Kronos).}

Jord is immense -- ... she could envelope you. ... She wore a green garment that looked like a piece of turf ... draped about her."

p. 162

spoken by Jo,rd : "I am Nott's first child, born just after she rose to the sky. ... We arranged for his wedding, Bestla and I, married him to that babe ... while I made merry with her future husband ..., and I bore him a son, and sent that son to Bestla to raise".

p. 163

sung by Jo,rd : "I am the daughter of Night and Water ... .

I was born of

{"Orpheus says : "... Sons and daughters of the ... starry sky! ..."" "I am a child of ... starry heaven But my race is of heaven alone." ("FMBG")}

the stars in the lake reflected ... . ... .

{referring to the Tarot/Tarock/Tarocchia card 'Star' with its reflecting-pool}

Green I awoke ... the tree ... curl."

{"The spirally carved Druidic wand was made of Ash" ("T-L:A").}

p. 164

"Gerda ... the Lady of the Walled Garden ... was in ... a shrine to her in my herb garden ... . ... . ... Gerda ... plants herb gardens wherever she lives. Her favorite is the extensive one at her father's hall in Jo[,]tunheim, but she also has one in Vanaheim at Frey's house there ... . Although she no longer goes to A[`]sgard, there is a small walled herb garden at Sessrumnir {Sess-ru`mnir 'Seat-roomy'} that was given to her by Frey[j]a during her stay, and it is still lovingly tended in her honor. ...

She is a tall solid-bodied woman with a round pale face ... . Her eyes are dark ...; her nearly-black hair hands past her knees in a thick braid ... . ...

Three black cats prowl around her ankles. "They are from Sessrumnir," she says. "My wedding gift from my sister-in-law, to keep me company. ...""

p. 165

spoken by Gerd : "This tree you are planting, which bears my name [p. 164 : "Sambucus nigra var. "Gerda"."] : ... its virtues are still good. ...

The weregild you pay for these plants is the wall that protects them from ... the mouths of wild animals".

p. 168

"Nidhogg was there, silvery-blue as the dragonfly, ... it spoke to me, golden reptilian eyes glinting. ... Nidhogg can speak, in hissing serpentine whispers".

p. 169

spoken by Nid-ho,ggr : "I am the Gnawer At The Root. ...

p. 170

If you try to settle into your roots, you feel it,

The gnawing feeling ... in your sunlit world. ...

Run, little locust-children ... ."