Norse Goddess Magic (14 page)

The telling point in this “dream” was when Eir lay on top of me and breathed
in my mouth. I've read a few texts about shamanism, so I know this is a
shamanistic healing technique used in many cultures. Only I didn't know it then.
What's more, this kind of action was something I would never have pictured a
dignified goddess such as Eir doing. When a trance veers off in a direction very
different from what I expect, I begin to think there may be something to it.

Oh, yes, I also got well. Turned out I didn't have the flu. I had salmonella
poisoning, a type of food poisoning that the doctor assured me can be fatal if
not properly treated. Fortunately, goddesses, unlike university health centers,
are open on the weekend.

Years later I was giving blood to the Red Cross, a practice that used to make
me very squeamish, I blush to admit. In fact, that's one of the reasons I was
doing it, as an act of will. Because I'm a small person with small veins, it
took quite awhile for the phlebotomists to get my pint out, and because I found
the act not only tedious but also nerve-racking, I started using the time to
daydream about gods and things, notably Tyr, from whom I thought I might borrow
a little valor. I was very tired that afternoon, and gradually this daydreaming
grew deeper until it became a sort of hypnogogic dream state . . .

I see Eir rushing from her room. It is made of rough wood
with open beams. Bundles of herbs and flowers hang drying from them, and bottles
and potions are lying all over the room. Her small, narrow bed is made with very
white, clean sheets and a homemade quilt. She is running because this is the day
Tyr is binding the wolf, and she knows there will be trouble. She has run to her
room to get her medicines and now hurries back to the assembly of the gods. From
the hill in the distance she hears their cries and shouts. She arrives to find
that Tyr has lost his hand. All is turmoil as the wolf is led away bound, and
the gods shout and talk excitedly to one another. Eir and Frigg support Tyr by
the shoulders, helping him back to Eir's room. Eir treats him, trying to stop
the bleeding. Alone with her now, he shows the pain and sorrow he would not
yield to before the others. Later that night he is asleep, or unconscious, lying
on Eir's small bed. She takes off her clothes and lies on top of him, her naked
body against his. She breathes into his mouth. His sleep becomes easier . . .

I get the feeling that whenever Tyr can take a moment for
himself, he seeks out this quiet, strong woman whose courage and devotion to
duty match his own.

I found this interesting because I had never pictured Tyr with
a mate or lover, or even “just a good friend,” nor read of his being connected
with a goddess, although there is a verse in the Lokasenna (st. 40) indicating
that Tyr had a wife. Several weeks later I received an issue of a Heathen
magazine in which there was an article describing a tranceworking that also
dealt with Tyr's loss of his hand. In this trance the author had had a vision of
Tyr lying on a bed in a candlelit room while a woman knelt at his side, her
upper body lying across his, weeping.
⁸

Reading this certainly excited me. Although Ariel, the author of the article,
felt that the woman present in the room with Tyr was the goddess-figure Night,
and the description of her differed somewhat from mine, it did seem striking
that we both had had a vision of Tyr's loss that included his being cared for by
a woman in blue garments, a woman who obviously had strong feelings for him.

Years later I came across some references describing several carved stones
found at Housesteads, a Roman fort on Hadrian's wall (a Roman fortification in
northern England). The inscriptions are dedicated to Mars Thincsus (“Mars of the
Thing”) and the two Alaisiagae, or Alaisiagis. Mars of the Thing is usually
assumed to refer to Tyr in his aspect as the god of the Thing, or legal
assembly. A stone relief shows a god, presumably Mars/Tyr, with two female
figures. An altar found later also had an inscription to the Alaisiagae, this
time referring to them as goddesses and giving their names as Baudihillie and
Friagabi (“Battle Ruler” and “Freedom Giver”).
⁹

Echoes of Eir

These names and the presence of the female deities with a battle
god would seem to suggest that these are Valkyrie figures, although the
inscription stresses the god's lawgiving function. The name
Alaisiagae
seems related to the term
alagabie
(“lavish givers”), usually applied to
the dísir. Jan de Vries, Dutch scholar of Germanic linguistics and mythology,
goes on to connect this term to the Frisian word for law-speaker,
asega,
and with the verb
aisjan,
which he relates to the word
eisa
or
eira,
arriving at the conclusion that the goddess pair might be related,
albeit at some distance, to the Norse Eir.
¹⁰
Eir herself appears in a
list of beings referred to as “Odin's maids” (Skáldskaparmál, ch. 75). Many of
the other names in the list sound like Valkyries, although they are also called
norns and are said to shape human destiny.
¹¹

This is not to imply that all of this proves that Tyr and Eir were definitely
connected in Old Norse worship, although certainly a warrior god and a healing
deity would have some overlapping interests. In addition, Eir's associate,
Frigg, shares a number of qualities with Tyr, particularly their support of law
and social order. Interestingly, something that started out as an independent
dream or vision was mirrored in the vision of another person with whom I'd had
no contact and later echoed in some actual inscriptions.

Eir, then, is primarily a goddess of healing and physical health. She is
involved not only with all aspects of healing disease and injury but also with
nutrition, exercise, and preventive medicine and health maintenance. Her scope
encompasses mental and emotional well-being as well as bodily health. She is
also a goddess of magic and shamanism, particularly those practices related to
healing.

Eir and Frigg share this interest in healing, particularly women's health
concerns and the process of conception and childbirth. They fulfill the role of
the mother as nurturer and nurse. Although primarily mentioned in relation to
human health, Eir is also presumably concerned with the health of the
community's animal companions. Frigg too has a strong connection to domestic
animals and herself appears in the “Second Merseburg Charm” as one of the
deities attempting to heal Balder's horse. Eir also has ties to Freyja, both in
her connection to childbirth and in her role as the healer and wisewoman present
on the battlefield.

Ritual

Rituals to Eir would obviously be concerned with healing, which
would include the maintenance of good health in general as well as healing
specific wounds or diseases. In cases of pregnancy and childbirth one would want
to call on Freyja and Frigg as well as Eir. Eir seems connected to soothing
colors, particularly blues and grays, greens, and also white. Copper might be
used as a symbol, worn as jewelry or magically charged as an amulet or charm.
People with knowledge of herbology could use appropriate herbs as symbols or as
part of a charm, or even drink them in a tea or wine. Eir can be invoked in
conjunction with most other healing techniques or any type of magic one would
ordinarily use to promote health. In rituals to Eir, herbal teas, milk, or fruit
juices often seem more desirable than alcoholic beverages for toasts and
libations, particularly when one is actually ill. However, this goddess also
seems to like cider and sherry and the occasional dose of medicinal whiskey.

Any healing magic should also be accompanied by a pledge to take specific
practical steps in the physical world to improve one's health; praying for Eir
to help you with your cholesterol level while scarfing down as many
cheeseburgers as you can is not going to work. Eir, like Frigg, is a practical
goddess who likes her petitioners to be willing to do some of the work
themselves and to be able to take care of themselves in the everyday world.
Rituals to Eir are often accompanied by a strong desire to be nice to yourself;
yield to this. Make yourself the special, soothing, sickbed foods Mother used to
give you (or those you wish Mother had given you); sleep late; take it easy; and
give your body and soul a chance to be well and happy.

Call to Eir

Hail Eir—best of leeches—
    the peaceful, the kindly . . .
partner of Frigg, the mother;
comrade of Menglod, the healer;
friend of Tyr, the one-handed god.

Solace of the sick,
Binder of bloody wounds,
Midwife to the mother,
Mother to the child,
    Herb keeper—tea brewer—
    Smoother of cool white sheets,
        the fever's bane.

Come to us, gray-eyed goddess;
Bring healing and health,
        succor and strength,
        love and long life.

Eir—Healer—Come!

10

Saga

The Storyteller

Lore

Saga (ON Sága) is another of the Norse goddesses who are numbered
among the Asynjur. Snorri (Gylfaginning, ch. 35) lists her as the second goddess
and states that she lives in a great dwelling called Sokkvabekk. In the
Grímnismál (st. 7) we learn that Sokkvabekk is the fourth hall in Asgard,
surrounded by cool waves, and that every day Odin and Saga drink there gladly
together from cups of gold.

Although we are not told many details about Saga, there is still much that
can be inferred from the sparse information available. Her name, while
technically not the same word as the feminine Icelandic noun
saga,
undoubtedly comes from the same root,
segja,
meaning “to say or tell.”
The Old Norse word
saga
means “story,” “tale,” or “history,” and in
modern German and English it still means “legend” or “myth.” More specifically,
we use it to refer to heroic narratives written in the twelfth or thirteenth
centuries that chronicle the feats of historical or legendary figures in
Scandinavian culture or modern narratives written in the same style.

A saga is more than mere history—it blends fact with legend, narrative with
poetry. The pre-Christian Norse made no distinction between factual, historical
works and fictional, literary ones.
¹
Instead, people sought to record
all aspects of reality, combining factual, artistic, and spiritual truths into
an organic whole. They had no concept of fiction but regarded all tales as true
on a certain level. To them, legends were as real as documented occurrences, and
therefore they did not distinguish between the two in their sagas. A saga
records the history of a people's soul rather than mere events and thus is a
link between the ancestors and the present and future generations.

A Personification of Legends

The goddess Saga, then, can be seen as a personification of
these stories, and indeed she is not the only feminine figure to be used to
personify a legend. The Greek muse Klio personified history, although what Saga
represents would probably encompass several of the muses' functions. In Germany,
when people took turns telling stories, they said the Märlein went around from
house to house. This game of passing around the telling of myths or fables was
also practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
²
In Norway parents
still tell their children
eventyr
(“fairy tales,” from the ON
ævintyr
and related to the English
adventure
).

The poets of the thirteenth century captured the spirit of adventure in their
verse. In their Frau Aventiure tales, Dame Aventiure wandered the countryside on
foot, knocking at the doors of the minstrels and demanding that they let her in.
³
Peter Suchenwirt, late-fourteenth-century Austrian poet, describes a vision of
Dame Aventiure. In it, she appears in a forest grove and says she has traveled
throughout the land, visiting kings and lords as Frau Ehre's messenger, and now
has come to make her report. Then, putting a gold ring on her finger, she
disappears.
⁴
Ehre
is the German word meaning “honor,”
“reputation,” or “glory,” and, like Saga, it is a feminine noun. Frau Ehre can
be compared to Frigg, the queen of Heaven, who functions as a dispenser of glory
much as an earthly queen would and who, as Lady of the Asynjur, is Saga's
leader. Also, spinning and storytelling, the special functions of these two
goddesses, have long been connected in the lore of the dísir and wisewomen of
Germanic culture.

Saga has often been compared to Frigg, many seeing her as merely another name
or guise for Frigg herself and not a separate goddess at all. Some sources claim
that Saga is Frigg because Odin, Frigg's husband, drinks with Saga daily in her
hall. Given Odin's reputation with women, I find this reasoning less than
persuasive. But what is the relationship between Odin and Saga? Odin, in his
function as poet and giver of divine inspiration, represents here all writers
and poets who must return to the primal legends and the collective soul of their
people to derive that inspiration that is the mark of truly great poetry.

The name of Saga's hall, Sokkvabekk, means “Sinking Brook,” and the
Elder
Edda
goes on to speak of the cool waves that flow there. In the Helgakviða
Hundingsbana I (st. 39), Sinfjötli claims to have fathered nine wolf cubs in a
place called Sogunes.
Sogunes,
or
Sagunes,
means “Saga's ness” or
“Saga's cape” (as in a seacoast). The image of wolves, one of Odin's animals,
and the appearance of the Odinic hero Sinfjötli reinforces the link between Saga
and Odin. The fact that the place is obviously near the ocean supports the
connection between Saga and water, and the use of Saga in a place-name gives her
existence as a separate goddess more credence.

Vague as the mythical references to Saga are, she has managed to leave an
impression on the modern Norse mind, as shown by a line from the Norwegian
national anthem, “Ja, vi elsker dette landet” (“Yes, we love this land”):

Og den saganatt som senker,
drømmer på vår jorð.
(And the night of Saga sinking
dreams upon our land.)

Granted, they may have been thinking of saga, the tale, rather
than Saga the goddess, but the images of sinking and dreams are highly
reminiscent of Saga's realm of memories, the Sinking Brook.

Viewed symbolically, Saga's hall represents the stream of the unconscious, a
typical meaning assigned to water in both myth and psychology. Again, Saga's
dwelling is the source of our inspiration, our songs and stories that ring true
and have the seeds of greatness in them. Odin, wise as always, knows he needs to
periodically drink from this well of collective memory to refuel his energies.
In return, the father of heroic deeds supports, favors, and protects history and
the past, and through the poet's song remembers and glorifies it. The cup from
which they drink is both the cup of poetic inspiration and the cup of
immortality.

The waters of Saga's hall can also represent the Well of Urd, where the
spiritual might of the past resides. The Germanic concept of time is dominated
by the past, which is seen as an ever-growing accumulation of experience that
shapes and nurtures the present and into which all actions are constantly being
interwoven. Saga's power is strongly connected to the workings of ørlög, the
primal events laid down from time's beginning that shape the patterns of present
events.

Saga is connected with those aspects of ørlög represented by Mimir's Well,
which can be considered part of the Well of Urd. Mimir is a jotun, or giant,
whose name means “memory” and whose well contains everything that has ever been
in all the worlds. By drinking daily from the well, Mimir partakes of the
ever-growing ancestral wisdom of the entire cosmos, and it is this might for
which Odin was willing to give up an eye. Odin's daily drinking with Saga could
well be representative of his continuing affiliation with the powers of the
unconscious and of the past.

Saga is also associated with the sumble, a holy ritual drinking feast. This
is one of the oldest and mightiest of Germanic ritual works, and remnants of it
are even found in modern secular practices, such as making toasts. The core
elements of sumble involve passing a vessel, usually a horn, of ritual drink and
speaking words of meaning and power, notably toasts, boasts, oaths, and short
narratives about great deeds of the past.

The horn symbolizes the Well of Urd and the spiritual power of the past.
During the sumble, the worlds of people and gods become one in a timeless place
where the events of the past are interwoven with the events yet to be done. By
speaking over the holy horn, the people are placing their words into the Well of
Urd and helping to shape what is becoming.

Saga's links to the deeds of the past, to ritual drinking, and to song and
storytelling all connect her to the sumble ritual. Moreover, the traditional
bearer of the sumble horn was the mistress of the house. For example, in
Beowulf
the queen, Wealtheow, carries the horn around the hall. Frigg and
Saga both share in this aspect of sumble, in which the hostess of a feast binds
together a diverse group of people in goodwill and fellowship.

Trance

I see a woman with dark hair—black, perhaps—pale skin, and
blue eyes, tall and Junoesque, a mature woman in her late thirties or early
forties. Her hair is elaborately done up, with interlacing braids and scarves
and jewels scattered throughout. She wears much jewelry, and I notice in
particular her earrings—big gold hoops. Her clothes are in various shades of
blue. She is leonine, stately, dramatic. Her house lies by the sea, on rocks—not
a high cliff, but overlooking the ocean, with a very rocky shoreline below. The
house is stone and squarish in shape—but finished sculpted stone, not just
rocks. It is fine and grand yet austere, with a terrace that overlooks the sea.
She sits there with Odin, and they drink out of gold goblets and talk
together—of poetry, of song, and of history, comparing what they know.

All the deeds of men and women on earth, at the minute
they are carried out, appear carved into the walls of Saga's stone house, and
somehow the walls never run out of room, despite how many new deeds are added to
them. No matter how cleverly and carefully people may cover their tracks or
trick history into falsehood, no matter what the world knows and does not know
of deeds, the true deeds and actions of everyone are recorded in Saga's dwelling
for all time, to the doer's everlasting shame or glory—and the walls sing to
her, in a chorus of bell-like tones.

Saga often walks on the shore, out on the little rocky
jetties, and looks at the sea, especially at dusk. The wind blows her scarves
and clothes, which billow out behind her. She sings to herself then, in
languages no one else knows or remembers . . .

This vision of Saga as the receptacle of human events and
endeavors reinforces the image of her as the stream of unconscious memories of
humanity. She represents history as it really happened, not as it was told or
recorded. The telling of history is the province of Bragi and Odin, of the poet,
and the telling can be exaggerated or falsified, but Saga is history, the story
itself, the truth that cannot be changed or hidden. All poets, singers, bards,
and scholars—or creators of any kind—need to know Saga, the ancient well of
unconscious images and memories, if they wish to create truly from the heart and
soul.

Ritual

Rituals to Saga can be done for a variety of reasons, many of them complex.
For poets and authors, historians, storytellers, singers, and actors, Saga may
be viewed as a patron, mentor, or muse and contacted frequently as a source of
inspiration and wisdom and a model of skill.