Prayer Beads, Week 4: Jotunheim, Midgard, Muspellheim

Moving to the next three of the nine worlds:

I honor the thunderous world of Jotunheim, and the mountain-thurses who grant focus and passion.
I honor our sister realm of Midgard, door to the Nine Worlds, by which I journey forth.
I honor the fiery world of Muspellheim, and the fire-etins who grant strength and loyalty.

Jotunheim/Jötunheimr

I honor the thunderous world of Jotunheim, and the mountain-thurses who grant focus and passion.

Possibly deriving from the Jotunheimen mountain range in Norway. One of the interesting things in studying the Nine Worlds is that they have locations in this world that both resemble them and have related names.

Jötunheimr is the land of the Jötunn/Jotuns, powerful nature spirits and shape changers. In the Lumsk song Trolltind refers to them. They are representative of chaos and the forces of nature.

After the coming of Christianity, they would get referred to by other names and became part of the array of local landspirits. Their powers and functions were, for example, absorbed into the group of creatures called trolls. In Skáldskaparmál we see the following passage, spoken by a troll:

Troll kalla mik tungl sjötrungnis, auðsug jötuns, élsólar böl, vilsinn völu, vörð náfjarðar, hvélsvelg himins – hvat's troll nema þat?

They call me Troll; Gnawer of the Moon, Giant of the Gale-blasts, Curse of the rain-hall, Companion of the Sibyl, Nightroaming hag, Swallower of the loaf of heaven. What is a Troll but that?

Many of the later stories and folklore refer to the power of Christianity driving them away, or good Christians being scared away from the wild places by the booming voices of giants.

The land of Jötunheimr itself is separated by the river Ífingr from the walls of Ásgarðr and is commonly seen as a wild place. This is where the (in)famous forest Járnviðr (the Iron Wood) is found.

Midgard/Miðgarðr

I honor our sister realm of Midgard, door to the Nine Worlds, by which I journey forth.

Literally meaning "middle enclosure," it generally refers to as our world, Earth, but spirit workers tend to think of it as an astral equivalent to our world. Set some time around the Iron Age, this world seems lost in time but has more tangible connections to the world around it. Because of this, and because of its closeness to our world, many spirit workers use it as a "launching off point" to visit the other realms.

The realm of Miðgarðr itself is often visualized as small continent, surrounded by a large body of water and surrounded by the great serpent Jörmungandr, who is also known as Midgårdsormen (Midgard's Serpent).

In some models of the Nine Worlds Miðgarðr is portrayed as being in the center of things, though one wonders if this is the same kind of perceptive flaw that lead to theories of geocentricism. Spirit workers who follow Kaldera's model of the Nine Worlds--laid out as a spiral--don't hold to this. Regardless of whether it actually is the center, however, it being the closest realm to ours means that it might as well be from a spirit workers perspective.

Muspellheim/Múspellsheimr

I honor the fiery world of Muspellheim, and the fire-etins who grant strength and loyalty.

Meaning "Muspel land," Múspellsheimr land of fire, one of the two primal worlds from which everything else came. Between this land and Niflheim lies the void of Ginnungagap ("magical (and creative) power-filled space"). This is one of the primordial worlds from which the universe came forth, and while also being a force of creation it is Muspel's children who will break the bifrost bridge come Ragnarök.

The land is ruled by Surtr (Old Norse for "The Black One"). He is remarked to be the oldest being in the Nine Worlds, and regardless of whether this is true of the entity, the stories about him are undoubtedly very very old.

Link: Map of the Fallen

In honor of memorial day, there is a Map of the Fallen for use with Google Earth. It shows the individuals who have died, where they came from, and the circumstances of their death.

Prayer Beads, Week 3: Asgard, Ljossalfheim, Vanaheim

The beads now continue the journey into the Nine Worlds. Raven Kaldera imagines those worlds to be a spiral around Yggdrasil, which stands in the center. In this model the worlds go in the order: Asgard, Ljossalfheim, Vanaheim, Jotunheim, Midgard, Muspelheim, Svartalfheim, Niflheim, Helheim. My navigation skills are non-stellar, and so I generally navigate by landmarks in the Nine Worlds and think in terms of Okay, I follow this river from Midgard, past Yggdrasil, through Svartalfheim, and then I'll be in Niflheim... but its kind of nice to have some conception of how the worlds are situated.

My analysis of these is going to be somewhat shorter. In this part of the journey I am basically just making a note of each of the worlds and its denizens. The passages themselves are fairly generic, and I haven't gleaned much from them in meditation or in reading lore (or Lore™, for that matter). For example, when we say "the high world of Asgard" we are calling it such because it is traditionally represented... on top. When we say "the Aesir who offer knowledge and power" that tends to be their traditional domain.

A good exercise would be to go through the modern lore and find stories that are associated with these concepts, and I may return at a later date to do such, but for the moment will keep these brief.

I honor the high world of Asgard, and the Aesir who offer knowledge and power.
I honor the glittering world of Alfheim, and the Alfar who give inspiration to a mortal heart.
I honor the green world of Vanaheim and the Vanir who bring wisdom and joy.

Asgard/Ásgarðr

I honor the high world of Asgard, and the Aesir who offer knowledge and power.

Asgard itself is a fortress that is not easily entered without the Æsir's permission, and many of the Æsir are war deities of one form or another. It is guarded vigilantly by the likes of Thor and Heimdall. Short of Helheim, it is probably the single most difficult place to enter uninvited.

Asgard means the ""Enclosure of the Æsir," who are the principle deities of Ásatrú and the group of northern deities we know the most about from lore. They are the forces of order and civilization, and all of the trappings that come with those.

Alfheim/Álfheimr

I honor the glittering world of Alfheim, and the Alfar who give inspiration to a mortal heart.

Alfheim is one of the only places in the Nine Worlds that I have found a direct connection to other realms--the faerielands are adjacent and easily reachable from there. It is the ancient name of a place in Sweden. A place of legend, many many tales of spun off about this place in one form or another.

Vanaheim

I honor the green world of Vanaheim and the Vanir who bring wisdom and joy.

Vanaheim is a land shrouded by mists and hedge mazes. The deities are primarily focused around agriculture and fertility, but it pays to remember that this is the race that fought the Æsir to a standstill. These are also gods of blood and the cycle of life and death.

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...
  

Godaþegn and Godatheow

Editor's Note: This essay was later chosen for inclusion as part of Gods' Mouths.

In my first post on Boundaries I talked about the emotional boundaries between individuals. My second post on Boundaries went into more detail about the boundary between you and the person delivering a divine message to you, and how to receive that divine message.

In a future installment--still being written--I am going to get into a much more controversial area, and talk about the boundaries between you and the gods themselves, but before we get into that I want to touch on the topic of terminology and "god slaves."

One of the larger--and more uncomfortable--areas of discussion right now among Spirit Workers is the nature of our relationships with the gods. Some of the terms that get used, such as "god slave," carry a great deal of baggage with them. Many of the more prominent members and authors of our community claim the title godatheow (godslave).

I will go into significantly more depth on this topic later, but for the moment I would like to talk about impressions. One of my concerns is that newbies will get the wrong idea and believe that godatheow is somehow a "higher" form of relationship with the gods or a natural state that spirit workers tend to migrate to as they become more advanced. They may also conclude that these individuals have become "closer" to the gods than they can get without going through the same process.

While the current group of authors and godatheow generally disavow this, it doesn't help that so many of our highly visible members are godatheow, and many of them interact with one another enough that it can give both them and others a skewed impression of our community, leading Galina Krasskova to say in her essay Terms of Service:

I am a godatheow, a godslave. Most of the spiritworkers and shamans that I know are also godslaves - outright owned by their Deities. It goes with the territory.

While later on she states that One does not need to be a godslave to serve -- I want to make that abundantly clear -- no more than one needs to be a priest, or healer, or ordeal worker to serve and be of use to their Gods one still walks away--in general--with the feeling that if you are a Spirit Worker in the Northern Tradition and not a godatheow then, on some level, UR DOIN IT WRONG.

My teacher has over 20 years of experience and is in the service of Freyja. While I am working on three years in my Spirit Work training, I have around 11 years work as an occultist and have been service of Odin for over 4 years. Most of the members of my group have similar--or more--experience in a variety of different occult communities. I have friends who have undergone a full shamanic initiation, others who are shamanic practitioners of varying degrees of "immersion," and many who are members of initiatory magical traditions. Very few of these individuals--spirit workers, shamans, and occultists--could be referred to as godatheow. Not that there is a problem with being a godatheow, but I have to believe that it is fully possible to serve the gods--even as a spirit worker--without being a full slave to those deities.

In short, I would like to challenge the assumption that it goes with the territory, and say that there are a growing number of us that are not god slaves--are for one reason or another not suited or required to be god slaves--but are still dedicated, Northern Tradition spirit workers. I also want to emphasize that I am approaching this with an attitude of this also rather than this instead.

The Vanic-oriented practitioner Nicanthiel commented on this as well, stating that:

As such, there has been a lot of talk in spiritworker circles, especially those connected to Cauldron Farm, of god-slavery as the default spiritworker paradigm; the assumption seems to be, either you are completely en-thralled by your Boss(es), or you're not really a spiritworker.

I challenge that assumption, because not everyone is suited for slavery, and indeed, not every God wants a slave, Frey being the most obvious example. Are people called by such Gods, or lack the nature required for full slavery to be denied the right to serve their Gods? Even Odin doesn’t always want slaves; sometimes, all He wants is just a warrior, or just a magician, or just a tool.

Nicanthiel presents the term godaþegn/godathegn as an alternative, where "þegn" would be a noble servant of a higher noble. Raven Kaldera summarizes this term nicely and gives it his stamp of approval, saying that a godaþegn would be someone who had a strong (perhaps oathbound) bond with their deity, but had full agency except in some limited areas, and could leave if worst came to worst. I feel that this accurately encompasses my path as a spirit worker, it correlates with my own UPG of my relationship with Odin, and am going to start using it in my own practice.

I firmly believe that one does not need to be a godatheow to serve the gods, even as a devoted spirit worker or shamanic practitioner, and that a god may find one person well suited to be a godatheow, and find a completely different use for another individual that doesn't require that kind of relationship. These paths are mostly just different, and come with their own risks and characteristics, and some come with their own unique safety considerations. Like with relationships: Internal Enslavement isn't "higher" than Total Power Exchange isn't higher than M/s isn't higher than D/s isn't higher than vanilla and polyamory is not higher than monogamy or vice versa: they are different models and suitable to different people, to negotiate with each other. This will be dealt with in a lot more detain in some of my future essays on boundaries.

Further Reading

• Service by Piper