Book Review: Soul Retrieval, Mending the Fragmented Self

Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman (✭✭✭✭✬, 4.5/5)

I decided to read this book after reading Lupa's book review where she gave it "Five pawprints out of five" and concluded:

While there are occasional things I personally disagree with, overall I think this is a great text. Once I’m ready to do soul retrieval in practice, this will be an invaluable guide.

This piqued my interest enormously. I had seen this book on Amazon before, but given that it is from a Core Shaman perspective and I don't currently do soul retrievals I didn't pay much attention to it one way or the other. After some recent events have lead me to think that I have some soul fragments I will need to retrieve and after reading Lupa's review, however, I decided to go ahead and read the book.

I am extremely glad that I did. The content is well laid out and excellent. Safety and ethics are both discussed, and at no point does the author treat this as safer than dreaming, conflate it with guided meditation, or treat it as something that can be learned in a weekend workshop. She also addresses topics such as soul theft, rape, and incest and how soul retrieval works/can help with these.

She goes on to say that:

Learning to do shamanic healing takes time, lots of practice, and experience. I will share the details of my work to demystify it for you as you read on. I do not intend to teach you how to do soul retrieval in this chapter--that, I believe, is unethical. And I feel it is just as unethical for one to try soul retrieval after just reading this book.

If we truly want to honor the spirits and use the ancient ways in a powerful way, we must maintain integrity in the work at all times. Please do not dishonor yourselves, the people who are important to you, or the spirits by trying soul retrieval without the appropriate training.

Suffice it to say, after growing a little fed up with one of the most difficult techniques in shamanism getting relegated to being trained in weekend seminars, it was extremely refreshing to see this in front of the chapter on technique.

The book is spread into 11 chapters split into three parts:

• Part I: The Soul and Soul Loss
  
  
  
  • Chapter 1: Soul Loss
    
  • Chapter 2: Soul Retrieval
    
  • Chapter 3: Tracking Lost Souls
    
  
  
• Part II: The Search
  
  
  
  • Chapter 4: A Question of Technique
    
  • Chapter 5: Classic Examples of Soul Retrieval
    
  • Chapter 6: Community
    
  • Chapter 7: When Souls Have Been Stolen
    
  
  
• Part III: Welcome Home, Healing Through Wholeness
  
  
  
  • Chapter 8: Effects of Soul Retrieval
    
  • Chapter 9: Relationships and Sexual Issues
    
  • Chapter 10: Life After Soul Retrieval
    
  • Chapter 11: Preparing for Your Own Soul's Return
    
  
  

The first part deals with the nature of soul loss, what soul retrieval can look like, the nature of the worlds, and the tools that a spirit worker might use in their practice. It provides an effective demonstration of the concept of soul retrieval, without requiring a detailed knowledge of existent jargon. I believe this book can be effectively read by someone who has just heard of it and is considering it as an option, as well as someone who is considering performing it in the future. There is something of value in this book for both groups, despite that soul retrieval is one of the more difficult areas of shamanism.

The second part goes into more details about the process of looking for souls, and goes into more depth with the mechanics of Ingerman's practice in this field. She also gets into examples of things that cause people to lose parts of their soul, including soul theft and the loss of community.

Part three talks about the repercussions, positive and negative, of soul retrieval and gives advice on what to expect from soul retrieval. She emphasizes the need for people to do this in their own time when they are truly ready for change in their own life.

Spread throughout the book are exercises designed to help with your own healing and understanding of shamanic practice, along with copious case studies derived from her own practice. In a sense, I feel like this was the book I was looking for when I read Gagan's Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet. Something filled with case studies that focuses on how this helps along with some psychological theory, rather than focusing on where the issues come from that shamanic practices might be able to help with.

On the issue of reality in this practice, Ingerman states that:

As you read this book and wonder whether or not what I am talking about is real, I ask you not to enter into a battle between the right brain and left brain. Simply read the material and experience it. After eleven years of working with the shamanic journey I know nonordinary reality is real. But I don't intend to convince you of that. For me, the big questions are these: Does the information that comes from a shamanic journey work? Does this information make positive changes in a person's life? If so, who cares if we are making it up?

Suffice it to say, given my own perspectives on the subject, this does it work attitude is something I am thrilled to see in well-regarded books on the subject, especially those published in 1991.

Conclusion

In aggregate, I felt that this book is excellent. I have some disagreements with the author, but they don't really detract from the usefulness or power of the book. She doesn't flinch for describing things as real, including interactions with power animals and the goddess Isis. My only real issues with the book are a lack of an effective index and that, while it discusses illness from a shamanic perspective, shows a lack of analysis on when soul retrieval might be counter-indicated despite a client's insistence of wanting to continue (admittedly, this latter is a difficult and somewhat fuzzy category, and likely beyond the scope of the book).

These, however, are functionally minor points. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Journeying, Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet

Journeying : Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet by Jeannette M. Gagan (✭✭✭✬✩, 3.5/5, 13 June 2009)

One of the key areas of interest to a lot of spirit workers, myself included, is the link between shamanism and psychology. The role of a shaman, be it core or traditional, is service to the surrounding community, frequently in the capacity of a healer. Raven Kaldera states that, since putting out his shingle as a "Shaman," "health" has become the #1 issue that people ask about (as opposed to love or work, the other two frequent topics for readers). Harner states that the purpose of Shamanism is healing.

Given this association, it is natural that psychotherapists are starting to take an interest in Shamanism, and specifically in journeying, as a mechanism to encourage healing in their clients. Outside of some of the resources provided by the Institute of Shamanic Studies, there simply aren't all that many good, published resources on the relationship between Shamanism and Psychology. Especially not from the psychotherapist side.

Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet is an initial attempt to bridge this gap. After reading the effusive praise of the book Amazon, most of it from the point of view of a psychotherapist approaching shamanic practice, that I was eager to read it from the perspective of a spirit worker.

This book is not--and does not claim to be--an introduction to how to incorporate journeying in a psychotherapeutic context, nor is it in any way a "how to." Really, there are many books out there on that already, and so this book is attempting to enter a much-needed void: discussion of the actual link between them, and discussion of how one can facilitate and help the other.

The chapters of the book are as follows:

• Chapter 1: The Apple and the Orange
  
• Chapter 2: Shared Slices
  
• Chapter 3: How the Cradle is Rocked
  
• Chapter 4: Little Red Riding Hood Meets the Wolf
  
• Chapter 5: The Alchemical Connection
  
• Chapter 6: The Meeting Place
  

The sequence starts by showing some of the history of Shamanism and Psychotherapy, and then slowly working their way together over the following chapters. The final chapter, The Meeting Place, attempts to draw a synthesis between the two.

History

From the standpoint of introducing people with a psychotherapeutic background to journeying, this book is reasonably good. It attempts to present the argument that there is a missing core of a "Soul" from Psychology, and establishes through some discussion what role this concept of a "Soul" has had in the history of Psychology and Psychotherapy. It describes Psychology as a navel orange, with no clear center and with a vestigial second "fruit" inside--representing the role of the soul--and a variety of clearly delineating slices representing different schools of thoughts.

Shamanism, on the other hand, is compared to an Apple--with a central set of core techniques, concepts, and practices. Very different on the one hand, and the author is attempting to establish that they are basically both forms of fruit.

To do this, it launches into a discussion of third and fourth force psychology, transpersonal psychology, and covers the history of psychological thought including some notes for Aristotle, Freud, Descartes. She goes on to discuss Jung's Collective Unconscious, the role of visualization in both physical and mental health, and how Altered States of Conscious (ASCs) can be used as part of the healing process.

While generally interesting, during this discussion the author's inherent biases come out. I expected a Core-Shamanist Perspective with an emphasis on psychological healing via journeying (as the title suggests, and as opposed to other things that Shamanism can and has been used for over the years), what I didn't expect would be that the author would be unable to separate her own cultural biases, which appear to be based on her Christian background. These show up in several places throughout the book, but nowhere more clearly than when she discusses maladaptive ASCs, where she states that:

The emergence of unconscious conflicts may also be acted out in insidious rituals of possession, witchcraft, or other power-laden altered state ordeals; in life, as in fairy tales, such activities hint at evildoings and can elicit a sense of foreboding.

While it is easy enough to filter out the author's own biases in these situations, it makes me want to say "Really? You could shift your mind far enough to accept journeying, even as practiced by tribal shamans, did you really have to throw out other things practiced by traditional shamans in the process?"

How Journeying Can Heal

Later chapters the author starts to talk about the origin of psychological distress and how journeying can help. This, which to me should represent the core of the book, instead ends up as the weakest part. The author spends an inordinate amount of time talking about childhood sources for these problems, which I feel is less important for the purposes of journeying and shamanic healing than that the problems exist.

My own bias in these things is that I tend to be relatively pragmatic: understanding the source of the problems can help tremendously in finding a cure, but the source of such problems can be (and is already represented as) numerous other books, and the solution frequently works independent of the precise source. We don't really need a discussion of all of the various ways that these problems can and do form in childhood, we need a discussion of how journeying and shamanism tie into the therapy of the conditions regardless of their source.

Here, I feel it would have been better if it had taken Emotional Alchemy's approach and acknowledged the source, but then moved on to how journeying has been used to treat it, or a Shamanic view on the treatment of the problem.

To this end, I really wish the author had included more case studies and talking about specific circumstances where journeying has helped someone, rather than front-loading with the potential origin of psychological conditions, and then a couple of illustrative case studies on the topic.

Containment

The final chapters present a synthesis between shamanism and psychology and represents the strongest--and most useful--part of the book. Here we see the author talk about how journeying helps clients, how it offers a contained, safe, and non-judgmental space in which to work. Here we see the benefit of how journeying helps keeps the transference from happening on to the therapist, and situations for which the author says journeying is counter-indicated. This is all excellent stuff, and forms the start of where I want to see research in this field start to lead.

Conclusion

The unfortunate problem with this book for spirit workers and psychotherapists is that most of us are not in the target audience. For psychotherapists who are already using journeying, this book won't give them anything new to work with. For those who are skeptical of journeying, the book doesn't really give anything that might sway them or convince them otherwise even if they have a relatively open mind to the process. For the spirit worker, it might be an interesting read, but there isn't much here that we don't already know and use.

This leads me to think that there are two groups who would benefit the most from this book:

1. Psychotherapists and Psychologists who are curious about journeying and its application for healing, along with some context on it.
   
2. People who have a "TV Shamanism" view of what a Shaman is, and could use a little context.
   

For people in these situations, I can see how it would be a really useful book, and I will keep it on my shelf to loan out for just these purposes. Otherwise it is an interesting read, but I really wish the author had taken it just that one extra step farther and removed some of the less-useful bits about how childhood and other circumstances contribute to our current psychological state.

Further Reading

• Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal The Heart
  
• Suspending Disbelief
  

Book Review: Emotional Alchemy, How the Mind can Heal the Heart

The troubles you now are facing
They are not greater than your will
For there is nothing under heaven
You cannot overcome

See the door that lies before you
And know this too shall pass
The confrontation of your fears
And strength drawn from the past

Where the silent voices whisper
Find the course that is your own
And however great the obstacle
You will never be alone -- The Eye of the Storm, by The Cruxshadows

In the name of Mordgud, Guardian of the Gate, may my barriers of darkness open to my hand. -- Raven Kaldera's Bead Prayer, from Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner

Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman (✭✭✭✭✭, 5/5, 2 May 2009)

Just as a note, this book has had a profound impact on me and came at a time in my life when I desperately needed it. First I am going to talk a bit about that experience so that you'll understand the context from which I found this book, and some of why I am one of the cheerleaders of Mindfulness for occultists.

In Need of Alchemy

Some time ago I dated a young woman who had a condition called Complex PTSD. C-PTSD has a few different meanings and manifestations, but the long and short of it is that past traumatic stress--severe and ongoing over years as she was growing up--shattered her mind. This can then manifest in several different ways. In her case, she had lost all sense of self, all sense of boundaries or borders between herself and others, and lived in constant fear of abandonment. It manifested as extremely severe Borderline Personality Disorder, characterized by the expression I hate you, don't leave me.



Part of the characteristic of this condition is that she had an iron certainty of her view of reality and any deviation from this in someone else's view was wrong. Most individuals have an internal set of filters that accept that someone else may perceive a situation differently from themselves, may remember things differently, or may simply be working off of a different set of facts or assumptions.

She lacked this capability. She didn't have the boundaries to understand--fundamentally--the difference between herself and others. She would transfer her own feelings, behaviors, or perceived traits on to me. She thinks she has something wrong with her, so she would accuse me of having something wrong with me.

Her view of reality was so certain, so inflexible, and so black-and-white that it could make one question their own sense of self and their own sense of reality. Especially if they were immersed in it, as I was.

It is not an exaggeration to say that, in the process of knowing her, I was destroyed. My carefully laid network of boundaries, my assumptions about reality, my sense of self, my self-esteem, even the foundations of my own sanity were not merely torn away: they were obliterated. My teacher described it on a metaphysical level as like seeing a smoking crater in me.

After I managed--thanks to spirits and friends--to break away, I had to do a great deal of self work. Walking on Eggshells is the best book out there for people in my situation, and helped me understand what had happened, and to take responsibility for 100% of my 50% of the relationship, and not take any responsibility for her 50%. To not cast blame, but to understand it from her perspective while at the same time understanding and validating my own experience. That wasn't enough, by itself, however: I needed a way to rebuild myself and to understand what had happened--not just within the relationship--but within me. I needed a way--internal to myself--to keep it from happening again.

Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman helped me do exactly this. Emotional Alchemy is about a form of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MBCBT). It combines a form of Western psychotherapy, called Schema Therapy, with Buddhist theories on Mindfulness: the art of paying attention. In this synthesis it creates something truly powerful.

The Book Itself

A schema is an emotional trigger reflex. Past experience builds a set of pathways in our brain so that we can get triggered by events or other parts of our psyche. To quote Emotional Alchemy:

These emotional habits are learned so thoroughly that they operate outside our awareness, and much of their power over our lives comesf rom the fact that they are largely unconscious. Just as we are unaware that they are being formed as they take shape, and we don't remember most of the specifics about how they became our preferred habits, we remain unaware of how they control us.

The premise of the book is to use Mindfulness to identify, understand, and move past the maladaptive schemata. It talks about the uses of Compassion, Equanimity, Mindfulness, and Schema Therapy, and while the goal of the book is geared toward synthesis it is emphasized that many of these things are beneficial in isolation as well.

Throughout the book examples are given from her own life and from clients on schemata and the effects of Mindfulness. The tone is conversational, and it frequently feels like the author is gently guiding you through the topic.

Each chapter ends with a small set of exercises or processes to go through as part of the process of Emotional Alchemy.

Outline

The book itself is divided into four primary sections, each with its own chapters:

1. Emotional Alchemy
   
   
   
   1. An Inner Alchemy
      
   2. A Wise Compassion
      
   3. The Healing Qualities of Mindfulness
      
   4. A Model of the Mind
      
   
   
   
2. Things as They Seem
   
   
   
   1. Emotional Habit
      
   2. Schemas in the Larger World
      
   3. How Schemas Work
      
   
   
   
3. A Mindful Therapy
   
   
   
   1. The Many Uses of Mindfulness
      
   2. Breaking the Chain
      
   3. Changing Habits
      
   4. Working with Emotions
      
   5. You Don't Have to Believe Your Thoughts
      
   6. Relationships
      
   7. The Circle of Life
      
   8. Stages of Healing
      
   
   
   
4. Spiritual Alchemy
   
   
   
   1. Perceptual Shifts
      
   2. Investigating the Mind
      
   3. Reframing Suffering
      
   4. May Confusion Dawn As Wisdom
      
   
   

Section I: Emotional Alchemy

The first section on Emotional Alchemy involves a basic set of definitions and talks about the need for the synthesis of Eastern and Western approaches. It goes on to build a foundation on topics such as Mindfulness, Equanimity, Loving-Kindness, and Compassion and gives basic meditative techniques for building on these. It talks about the need for Mindfulness in our day-to-day lives, defining Mindfulness as: seeing things as they are, without trying to change them. The point is to dissolve our reactions to disturbing emotions, being careful not to reject the emotion itself.

The section gives multiple mindfulness exercises which, while fairly standard, are excellent. It then closes with a chapter about how the mind works, how it avoids topics that it finds uncomfortable, and the nature of schemata.

Section II: Things as They Seem

The second section turns its attention to maladaptive habits, modes of perception, and we get a more thorough introduction to the concept of a schema. The author lays out ten different maladaptive schemata, going into their origins and a few possible manifestations, along with how they can be triggered. It talks about the neurological basis for these schemata, and how to start understanding and finding our own schemata.

It concludes that:

Once schemas are recognized and empathized with, we can begin the work of changing them.

Exactly how to do this we get in to in the next section.

Section III: A Mindful Therapy

Whereas the first part of the book focused on Mindfulness and the second part focused on Schema Therapy, the third section of the book talks about building a synthesis. It discusses techniques for noticing that your schemata have been primed and what to do about it when in a schema attack. It also goes into how schemata come into play in relationships, both romantic and with your family.

Section IV: Spiritual Alchemy

The final section of the book takes the techniques in Section III and moves them one step farther, integrating them more heavily with Buddhist perceptions and modes of thought. This section is almost entirely about the Buddhist model of the mind, the nature of suffering, and how mindfulness and schemata fit into this.

This section is mostly unnecessary after you have gotten through the rest of the book, if you were reading it for the purpose of learning the basic techniques and are uninterested in Buddhism or the philosophy underlying these techniques. That said, the material is still interesting and it is nice to see some of the origins of these techniques, along with a perspective on where the theories themselves come from. It is also good at showing some of the potential next steps as an individual continues to use these techniques.

Conclusion

Recently I commented to a friend that it felt like Elizabeth Vongvisith and I were becoming the cheerleaders for Mindfulness in the Heathen community (M - I - N - D - F - U - L - N - E - S - S what's that spell!? Mindfulness! Ra!). I have worked with several books on the subject, and I have found none that are better at working with it from a western context than this one.

I do have some minor quibbles with the content of this book. First, the descriptions of the schemata all seem somewhat limiting, and I wish there had been a more in-depth discussion of manifestations. The author also often chooses to give examples for the schemata by starting with the circumstances that lead to the schemata for an individual, followed by it's consequences. This lead me to reject a schema because my circumstances were different and the manifestation wasn't the same, when in truth I definitely had a different form of the same schema.

We also see that a lot of the book focuses on the nature of Mindfulness and how it has helped people dealing with everything from anxiety disorders to mild schemata, rather than focusing on the actual practice of Mindfulness. This is a fairly indirect approach, which suites my own preferences well for this sort of book, but may frustrate some readers. Especially since this is more of a process than a product.

These are, in truth, fairly minor issues and do not really detract from the power of the book.

To close with a quote from the Dalai Lama, writing the foreword to this book:

I offer my prayers that readers of the book may indeed be able to transform their minds, overcome their disturbing emotions, and achieve a sense of inner peace.

Further Reading

• Mindfulness by Elizabeth Vongvisith
  
• Living Life in Circles
  
• Boundaries II: I have a message from god...
  

Book Review: Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner

✭✭✭✬✩ (3.5/5, to quote Daven's rating system: "Good, there should be more books like this")

Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner: A Book of Prayer, Devotional Practice, and the Nine Worlds of Spirit by Galina Krasskova and Raven Kaldera is a difficult book to review. One the one hand, the book has excellent content and the author's aims in writing the book were laudable: we really do need more books like this. However, I feel that what it claims to accomplish (and what my expectations might have been, though they aren't precisely fair), what it feels like it is aiming to accomplish, and what it actually accomplishes are three different things.

Claims and Expectations

The title, reminiscent of Cunningham's famous Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, evokes an image that this book is about practicing the Northern Tradition alone, and that this is a very basic book for beginners. Containing things, perhaps, along the lines of ritual outlines, ceremonies throughout the year, solid groundings in the cosmology, or a discussion on topics such as Heathen ethics.

This position is encouraged by the back of the book, which says that the book "features an in-depth exploration of altar work, prayer, prayer beads, ritual work, sacred images, and lore, and a thorough examination of the common cosmology that forms the foundation of belief of Northern Tradition communities." Reading that, one expects a that all of these areas will be covered in enough depth that a beginner could easily find what they are looking for in this book. It also looks like there should be an emphasis on practicing strictly as an individual, which raises its own set of issues independent of group practice.

The back of the book also claims that it is a "look at devotional work in religions from Theodism to Asatru to Norse Paganism, all of which encompass the umbrella of the Northern Tradition." This leads one to expect that these religions will be given more than a superficial treatment, and to see information on a variety of different branches of Germanic Neo/Mesopaganism.

What the Book Aims To Accomplish

The book is divided into nine chapters, plus an introduction and a set of appendices:

• Introduction: Solitary Spirit
  
• Chapter 1: Tribe and Tradition
  
• Chapter 2: Defining Devotion: The Evolution of Practice
  
• Chapter 3: Nine Worlds of Spirit: Core Cosmology
  
• Chapter 4: In Reverence: Meditation and Prayer
  
• Chapter 5: Counting on Faith: Prayer Beads
  
• Chapter 6: Footsteps to the Gods: Solitary Rites
  
• Chatper 7: Sacred Images: Altar Work and God-Posts
  
• Chapter 8: Right Action: Doing the Work
  
• Chapter 9: Sacred Inquiry: The Conundrum of Words
  

The appendices contain an Epilogue, a table of deity altars, offerings, and associations, footnotes, a bibliography, further reading, an index, and a section touching very briefly on the authors. From an initial glance, the topics seem reasonable and hit the major points for a book on spiritual development in a Northern Tradition.

The Introduction helps to clarify the purpose of this book a great deal: this is a book about devotional practice. It talks about how in some branches of Neopaganism books of this nature focus "partly on opersonal ritual, and partly on magic and spellwork." It explains that they will be avoiding the latter topic, not because it isn't valuable, but because they want to "stress that this is a religion, and devotional work is a good place to start in any theistic faith." Excellent, we get a clear picture that this is a work of devotion, not of magic and that this book is talking about devotional practice in the context of that religion. This doesn't contradict the claims and expectations, and reinforces what this is all about.

It further explains some of what is addressed in each of the chapters, mapping some of them loosely to Dale Cannon's Six Ways of Being Religious.

Despite the title of the introduction being "Solitary Spirit" and the title "Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner," the issue of being a solitary Heathen is not really addressed. We get the impression that this is not a book for the solitary practitioner, but for developing one's own spirituality, which is a very different thing from what is implied by the phrase "solitary practitioner." The latter conjures the image of the individual working alone without any firm connections to the surrounding Heathen communities; the former would seem to imply that it is a book about growing oneself and one's relationship with the gods independent of whether you are in a true group.

This impression is reinforced when we look at the chapter on Solitary Rites, where we see devotional rites and rites honoring various deities, but nothing about seasonal rituals, "holidays," celebrations, or things of that nature. At no point that I could find do we really see a discussion on finding or starting a group. This is fine, but it emphasizes that this is a book about developing one's own spirituality, and not about being a "Solitary Practitioner" who has no real tribe, kindred, coven, or similar structure (what "solitary practitioner" meant in Cunningham's work).

This makes the book slightly more advanced than the initial impression would indicate, and a careful reading of the back of the book doesn't give any indication that it is for a "Solitary" beyond the title.

It seems that this was an intentional design decision, and we as Heathens (or just Neopagans in general) definitely need books on developing our spirituality. Books on the practice of centering prayer and developing our own spirituality are an extremely welcome addition, even if it isn't quite the same thing--in my mind--as what the title or some of the chapter headings would indicate.

What the Book Accomplishes, A Review on Content

Having established that this is a book about spiritual development, the rest of this review will be on how it accomplishes that goal. Overall it does well and the content is well laid out and informative, and all of the basics are covered. Getting into more detail by chapter:

Chapter 1: Tribe and Tradition, The Northern Tradition Landscape

This chapter is the only place in the book that we get a glimpse of the various traditions that form what can be loosely described as the "Northern Tradition Religions." They get into the difference between Reconstructionist and Reconstructionist-derived religions and describe a few of the major paths:

• Asatru, with a brief reference to Vanatru, Odinism, and Rokkatru.
  
• Theodism
  
• Culturally-based denominations, such as the Urglaawe
  
• Norse Wicca
  
• Northern Tradition Paganism
  

They get heavily into terminology here, and use the definition of "Heathen" to be "Reconstructionist" but include quotes indicating that not everyone sees it this way. Beyond that, the coverage of the various religions is fairly superficial. Forn Siðr--which forms the largest Danish pagan society--gets a single mention inside of a quote which doesn't reveal much about it. Most of the others receive between one sentence and one paragraph describing them, with a lot more text discussing terminology about the difference between Reconstructionist and Reconstructionist-derived, Pagan vs. Heathen, and the difference between Tribalist, Folkish, and Universalist.

This is all good content, and we need to be having a discussion about these differences, but it doesn't quite fit what I expected given that the book purports to "look at ... religions from Theodism to Asatru to Norse Paganism." I wanted more meat talking about what each of these religions is, what it means, and what someone who is looking at each religion in turn would find in the various Northern Tradition paths. That said, what is presented tends to be presented fairly, and while the author's have biases they refrain from "bashing" those who disagree. It at no point indicates that any path is inferior, and does a good job of "stepping back" to look at the different approaches reasonably and rationally.

Chapter 2: Defining Devotion, the Evolution of Practice

This chapter talks about how there is a growing movement toward devotional practice among modern German Neopagans. More than any other, this chapter talks about being a solitary vs. being in a group. It also talks about how devotional practice works in these settings. It talks in a great deal of depth about the reactions to devotional practice, and how the Path of Devotion. All-in-all excellent stuff.

Chapter 3: Nine Worlds of Spirit, Core Cosmology

This chapter would be difficult to write for a book of this nature in the best of circumstances, and shows where the stress of finding a good "level" for this book comes in. The readers of this book likely range from people just of the door and who are somewhat lost, to people who have read everything from The Saga of Grettir the Strong and several translations of the The Poetic Edda, to The Road to Hel.

In order to narrow this, the authors chose to focus on just the cosmology and the nine worlds. It talks about how the cosmology involves three key components: the gods, the nine worlds, and wyrd. It then goes on to present a creation myth with some analysis, a prayer to the elements, and how ultimately the nine worlds were created.

It then goes on to talk about the three "tribes" of gods:

• Aesir
  
• Vanir
  
• Rokkr
  

It gives a brief explanation about each of these, and talks about how each of them tend to be viewed by Northern Tradition religions. It at no point says that you must "worship Rokkr," which is some of the propaganda I've seen about those who follow certain NT paths.

It also talks about the nature of Wyrd, giving one of the clearer examples I've seen for this.

This chapter definitely hits its mark: it doesn't get bogged down in mythology, while presenting a clear overview of the Nine Worlds.

Chapter 4: In Reverence, Meditation and Prayer

The chapter starts off with the elegant Sigdrifa's Prayer, which is one of my favorite prayers in any tradition. It then goes on to talk about the nature of prayer and the question of "why we pray." It talks about a few basic prayers that are nearly universal in nature:

• Thank you
  
• Please
  
• I love you
  
• I am sorry
  

This reminded me of something a Christian minister once told me: That the two most authentic, most heartfelt, and most common prayers were:

• Help me Help me Help me!
  
• Thank you Thank you Thank you!
  

After this it gets in to the topic of meditation. Here it doesn't ever really discuss the how or even the why of meditation, but mostly keeps itself to the what along with some mild diagnostics for common complaints. While it might have been useful to include at least one simple breathing exercise--or at least some more comprehensive references on the subject--I can understand not putting it in there. This does, however, elevate the level of the book to include someone who is already set off down this path, rather than evaluating it.

The final section of the chapter involve some "Prayers for Personal Devotions." It includes a reference to Be Thou My Hearth and Shield: A Northern Tradition Book of Prayer by Elizabeth Vongvisith which, while it looks excellent, isn't out yet and doesn't have an "approximate publish date" listed in this book (though I'll be including a link on this blog as soon as I hear about it being finished). The prayers included are:

• In Praise of the Vanadis by Gudrun of Mimirsbrunnr
  
• Vanir Meal Blessing by Sigrún Freyskona
  
• A Parent's Prayer for Patience by Raven Kaldera
  
• A Prayer for Faith by Elizabeth Vongvisith
  
• Prayer of the Lone Worshipper by Elizabeth Vongvisith
  

Overall I have no serious issue with this list. It is a reasonable selection without distracting from the purpose of the book. It would be nice if there were a morning or an evening prayer of some variety just for the sake of coverage (and devotional work of this nature is found in Chapter 7), but most of the major areas are covered.

Chapter 5: Counting on Faith, Prayer Beads

This chapter talks about the use of prayer beads in the Northern Tradition. It starts by talking about the nature of prayer beads and the "why" of their use, along with some basics of their construction, and then gets in to six different sets of bead prayers covering 24 pages (this is as long as all of Chapter 4, excluding the prayers at the end). These are presented with no real introduction, just one after the other. While the book claims in the previous chapter that "There isn't room in this book for prayers for every Deity and occasion," they seem to take a stab at including bead prayers for as many situations as they could reasonably fit.

Let me say that I like the prayers, and like the nature of bead prayers for devotional practice. That said, I feel that this chapter doesn't really belong: It would have been better to include one bead prayer, a link to a few others online, and to have then merged it with the previous chapter's section on prayer.

Chapter 6: Footsteps to the Gods, Solitary Rites

This is one of the best organized chapters in the book. It has clear section headings for it's various subsections, which break down the subject matter in a clear, logical fashion. The material is well organized and presented, covering benefits and hazards, along with the basic components for constructing a ritual. The selected rites for demonstration provide good coverage, and each one has introductory text talking about the rite, what it means, and how it relates to what has been covered so far. Despite the chapter's title, nothing in here requires a solitary practice, except in the choices of example rites.

This leads me to my one complaint with the chapter: Its choice of rites:

• Devotional Ritual for Sigyn
  
• Devotional Ritual for Njord
  
• Solitary Rite for the Ancestors
  
• Rite for the Land-Wight
  
• Rite for Tyr (asking his aid)
  

All of these rites are good, powerful rites, but it again goes back to the "developing one's personal spiritual independent of being a solitary practitioner." These are rites to be performed alone, not rites for what I think of as a solitary practitioner. The choice of coverage here is also interesting: we lack a devotional rite to Thor, Frey, or Odin: three of the most popular deities both in modern times and historically. There are no seasonal rites, rites of passage, or mention of rites such as ordeals. While this is clearly not supposed to be a "book of rites," it would be nice if there were more comprehensive coverage in this area.

That there is no discussion of seasonal rites at all really feels like a missing component of this book, since there isn't even a calendar, "wheel of the year," or list of holidays. Particularly for a solitary practitioner, but even in a group setting, these can form an important core of practice.

Beyond that, however, this chapter is probably the strongest in the entire book.

Chapter 7: Altar Work and God Posts

This chapter is divided into two major sections: Altars and God Posts.

The section on altars is excellent. The authors talk about the nature of sacred images, what goes on an altar, and how to set up your first altar. A photo of an altar to Hel is presented, along with one to Frey and several daily prayers that can be performed at that altar.

The section on God Posts is informative and interesting, but I do not feel it belongs in anything resembling an introductory book for solitary practitioners. What it takes to pull off a God Post--in terms of skill, time, resources, and land--is fairly nontrivial for most people, especially those who are "solitary practitioners." It isn't the kind of thing you can erect in an apartment building all that effectively, or put up in a public park. While they are very powerful devotional acts, I would have liked it if we had more on devotional altars, and maybe a side note and a few photographs to cover God Posts.

Chapter 8: Right Action, Doing the Work

This is the closest thing we have to a section on ethics. It talks about the various ethical systems, the challenges of ethical systems in reconstructionist religions (e.g., it is no longer acceptable to hang people in sacrifice to Odin), and on the few universal constants in Heathen religions. It talks about the idea of exchange and some very important key principles, and gives some examples of applying those principles.

I like this chapter a lot. One thing that we need is to have a comprehensive discussion of ethics, and this isn't nearly as well summarized in any other book I've seen as it is here.

Chapter 9: Sacred Inquiry, The Conundrum of Words

This chapter is about written lore. Not so much the actual contents of that lore, but how it is approached. It discusses the challenges, the issue of UPG vs. lore.

To someone who has been around the community for a while, there isn't much new in this chapter: it provides a bird's-eye survey of the landscape on how written lore is treated, along with it's use. Still, this coverage is extremely valuable and is presented in a fairly balanced--if somewhat Reconstructionist-derived--view.

Further Notes on Content

There were two issues regarding information presentation that I feel need to be brought up. These points may seem minor, but I feel like they are important because we are starting to see them come up more frequently in instructional books by Pagan authors.

The first is that the authors avoided lists. In numerous cases throughout the book, three or more items are presented in a series of paragraphs, each paragraph covering one option. While this is fine for exposition, I kept thinking back to my training in technical writing: people remember bulleted lists better. They also help break up the mass of words on a page, thus making the entire page easier to read. Instead we see a reference to the Six Ways of Being Religious, followed by eight individual paragraphs about them. I feel that it would have been better to prefix that by listing the "Six Ways" in a bulleted list, and then followed them with the paragraphs explaining them.

In Chapter 4, it lists the prayers "Thank you," "Please," "I Love You," and "I am sorry" and delving in to them, yet at no point are all four listed together, put into a list at all, or attached to a subject. There's nothing to indicate where each one might be, or where it's discussion might really begin or end. You are simply reading along and then come across "The fourth prayer is 'I am Sorry.'"

Another example where this comes up is in the first chapter, where there are no section headings or lists indicating what exactly I am looking at. This all makes finding specific information difficult, and diminishes the book as a reference text after it has been read through.

The second point is something I've noticed about Kaldera's style. He likes to present a point of view, and then provide a set of quotes "of interest" which provide other points of view. This works well in fairly conversational works or works where one's building a shared PCPG, e.g., in Kaldera's Pathwalker's Guide to the Nine Worlds. I don't feel that it worked nearly as well in this book, which is more instructional and informative in nature. It would have been better to integrate these in to the content--with a sentence introducing or explaining it (even as little as a "As X has said..."). The use of back-to-back block quotes or a multi-page quotes with no paragraphs, in particular, with no lead-in or following explanations can be very jarring.

Conclusion

The overall content of the book is excellent, and I recommend it highly. We need more books like this one, which provide a good and up-to-date coverage of the Northern Tradition path itself, rather than the mythology or individual practices associated with such.

The major issue I have is that it is suffers from a lack of good editing, e.g., gap analysis, focusing and clarifying of the scope, and a lack of structure and flow in several of the chapters. There are also smaller issues, such as words being presented both with and without the accent mark (e.g, "Sigrún" on page 96 vs. "Sigrun" on page 122).

The material that is included is excellent and if it could fix these issues, and address how the book is billed in terms of it's name and focus, the material that is there would be worthy of 5 stars.

Books

Book Reviews

For my book reviews I like to employ Daven's Rating System:

Stars	Meaning
✬✩✩✩✩	Pitiful. This book should never have been published. A waste of trees.
✭✩✩✩✩	Poor. To be bought only if you have a lot of money to waste.
✭✬✩✩✩	Bad. There may be some useful info here, but I wouldn't voluntarily buy it.
✭✭✩✩✩	Below Average. Get it if there is nothing else you can buy or borrow.
✭✭✬✩✩	Average. Good and bad elements cancel each other out.
✭✭✭✩✩	Above Average, there is some good things here.
✭✭✭✬✩	Good. There should be more books like this.
✭✭✭✭✩	Very good. Most libraries should consider getting this one.
✭✭✭✭✬	Excellent. If you see this book get it.
✭✭✭✭✭	Superior. Run run run to purchase this book, you will thank me.

Reviews

• Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner by Galina Krasskova and Raven Kaldera (✭✭✭✬✩, 3.5/5, 2 May 2009)
• Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman (✭✭✭✭✭, 5/5, 23 May 2009)
• Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet by Jeannette M. Gagan (✭✭✭✬✩, 3.5/5, 16 June 2009)
• Soul Retrieval, Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman (✭✭✭✭✬, 4.5/5, 4 September 2009)