Norse Goddess Magic (24 page)

Syn can also be invoked for protection, especially protection of the home and
of holy places. You could do a ritual to her to bless a new dwelling or to offer
extra protection any time you feel you might be threatened in your home. She can
also be invoked to protect a ritual circle or
hof
(temple) any time you
do a ceremony. As the guardian of the door to the hall, she, along with
Heimdall, the guardian of the rainbow bridge to Asgard, is a natural choice to
call on to protect and keep sacred holy places and rites.

Despite her more exalted functions, Syn seems to be a down-home kind of
goddess. In my dealings with her I hear her speak with an accent similar to
country dwellers of the area where I grew up. Therefore, her altar should be
rather cozy and homely, with simple, cheery, homemade decorations, if possible.
A quilt or shawl on the altar would be appropriate, and you might add any little
knickknacks or family “heirlooms” that remind you of home (even ugly or tacky
ones—Syn is one of the few Asynjur who would probably be willing to sacrifice
aesthetics for sentiment). For rites of defense, you might use various symbols
to help purify and protect the area—salt, water, fire, incense, sacred stones or
other holy objects, special weapons, flaxseeds, or vinegar, to name just a few.
Including a knife, sword, or other weapon on the altar is particularly useful.
In such rituals I have often incorporated the image of a giant wooden door
slamming shut and Syn's strong arms lifting an enormous bar in place to secure
it, with a loud slamming noise added for good measure.

If you're doing a rite to invoke Syn's aid in your defense against unfounded
charges, first make sure the charges are, indeed, unjust; you need to handle the
things of which you are guilty yourself. However, even if you are guilty, Syn
can still be invoked to ensure that you get fair treatment. State in the ritual
the facts and details of the case and give your oath on a stone, weapon, or
other sacred object. You might want to charge a small object or talisman in the
ritual and carry it with you when you face your accusers. Realize that it is up
to you to fight as hard as you can in your own defense in the physical world;
Syn will then lend her power to support your actions. Your deeds also serve to
cleanse your spirit of any ill luck or guilt that might linger as a result of
the accusation.

Call to Syn

Syn, mighty goddess, guardian of Fensalir,
    You who bar the door against the intruder,
    You who forbid ill luck to enter,
    You of the strong will and the strong arm.

Syn, goddess of the Thing,
    defender of the blameless,
    keeper of the kin,
    guardian of the luck.

Goddess of truth and light,
    Syn the incorruptible.
Be with us now,
    Ward well our hall,
    Keep fast our honor.
Mighty Syn, Come!

20

Vor

The Wisewoman

Lore

Vor (ON Vör), the last of the Aesir goddesses associated with
Frigg, is the most enigmatic of the group. Her name might mean something like
“the careful one,” but this etymology is dubious. Snorri lists her tenth in his
enumeration (Gylfaginning, ch. 35) and otherwise offers scant information about
her. She is said to be of a wise and searching spirit and has foreknowledge of
all that is to happen. Like Odin, she is constantly seeking wisdom and nothing
can be hidden from her. The saying that a woman became “aware” of what she
learned derived from Vor's name (perhaps referring to the Norse belief that
women had special abilities to sense the otherworld and divine the future), and
she is particularly associated with the wisdom and lore of women.

Vor seems to have much in common with the Norse völva, a type of shamanic
seeress once common in Norse society. A völva practices a type of magic called
seiðr,
which is generally characterized by activities such as soothsaying
and faring forth into other realms of existence in order to work magic and to
learn from contact with other beings. Unlike rune magic and
galdr,
which
emphasize control and will,
seiðr
involves submerging one's consciousness
into altered states and experiencing other worlds of reality. It is also
concerned with natural substances, such as animals, herbs, stones, and crystals.
¹

Seiðr
includes a type of divination performed by a class of trained
seers, both men and women, who act as go-betweens for the human race and the
various other worlds. The völva's spirit travels forth from her body while she
remains in a trance state, aided by chanting, dancing, or drumming. She might
wear a symbolic costume of animal furs or feathers and is helped by various
animal spirits. The purpose of the rite is traditionally to find out the answers
to questions dealing with the well-being of the entire community, such as the
causes of disaster or sickness or the answers to matters involving spiritual
lore, but questions are also asked regarding the fortunes of individuals.

Images of the old Norse völva appear in various sagas and other literature.
The Völuspá of the
Elder Edda
is a long poem presented as the predictions
of a dead völva foretelling the future of the gods and the universe; the title
literally means “Prophecy of the Völva.”
Eiriks saga Rauða
includes a
detailed description of a völva and the ceremonies she performs. She dressed in
animal skins, including calfskin boots, a lambskin hat, and catskin gloves.
Before the ceremony she ate a special meal made from the hearts of various
animals. During the rite she sat on a high platform while other women chanted
special spells to draw the spirits near so that the seeress could learn hidden
things from them. After the main rite, the völva answered important questions
regarding the welfare of the community at large, then predicted the individual
destinies of some in her audience.

These seeresses are usually associated with Freyja rather than Frigg and are
traditionally consulted chiefly on matters that are also the prime concern of
the Vanir—the prosperity of the community and the fertility of the people. The
typical völva traveled around the countryside, going from community to community
and attending the great feasts, just as the priests of the chief Vanir god,
Frey, did. There is some evidence that these seeresses might have once traveled
in groups in earlier times; perhaps they only later became solitary workers when
the old traditions were being broken down.
²

Intuitive Wisdom, Magical Power,
and Dreaming

Vor ties in with Frigg's function as a seer of destinies.
However, while Frigg is not given to speaking her predictions, Vor, if she is at
all like her human counterparts, is more likely to share her services with the
human community. Vor represents the kind of intuitive wisdom and magical power
often associated with women in older Germanic cultures, where women were thought
to be particularly in tune with spiritual forces, given to prophetic dreams and
empathic predictions, and greatly respected and heeded by community leaders.

Women in early Norse society were ordinarily considered to possess a higher
degree of holiness than men under normal circumstances and to be in closer
contact with the family's luck. This was because a family's frith and luck were
believed to be concentrated most strongly at the heart of the home, where the
activities of the women were centered. Thus, women were thought of as being
closer to the other worlds and more readily able to perceive the patterns of
ørlög in the web of the universe. A woman's premonitions and her knowledge of
what-is-becoming is born of an overflowing of luck from the depths.
³

Therefore, a woman's counsel was highly regarded, particularly when it seemed
she was prophesying, and no wise man would disregard her advice on an important
matter. Tacitus describes a woman whose prophecy led her German tribe, the
Bructeri, in their battles against the Romans. She was rewarded by receiving the
best of their plunder and was regarded as nearly divine.
⁴
Vor's
powers of foreseeing, then, while related to seið-magic, are more representative
of the spiritual gifts typical of women in general than they are to the
specialized practices of a worker of magic.

Another source of wisdom is found in dreams. Dreams often offer a glimpse
into the future, allowing a person to be aware of events before they happen, to
see the workings of the web of
wyrd
. The fylgja, that guardian female
spirit, often appears in dreams to give warning or advice. Dreaming is also one
of the ways a person can contact dead ancestors for wisdom and blessing. In
earlier times a person would sometimes sleep on top of a barrow, or burial
mound, to contact the dead and draw on the might of the past.

Dreams can give us valuable insight into our lives and ourselves. They
provide information about the physical world that we were too busy or distracted
to consciously register at the time as well as hints regarding any subconscious,
emotional reactions that we may have repressed. Dreaming can also give clues to
understanding how we feel about ourselves and our inner world, opening a channel
of communication between the higher self and the conscious mind.

Many people have trouble remembering their dreams and may even think they
don't dream at all. Often, if we don't consider our dreams important or feel we
don't have time to deal with them, we inhibit our memory of the dreamworld; it's
as if the subconscious mind gets discouraged and gives up trying to communicate.
One good way to get more out of dreams is to write them down. Not only will this
help you remember the details, but it will also emphasize the fact that you
consider your dreams important and will thus help stimulate recall. To start,
you might write down whatever you are thinking when you first awaken, whether or
not it seems to be a dream. When you do record your dreams, write quickly
without trying to organize the events or edit your writing. Finally, be sure to
do something with each of your dreams, even if it's only a brief analysis.

Lucid dreaming is a particularly powerful form of dreamwork. During a lucid
dream you become aware of the fact that you are dreaming and have the
opportunity to affect and shape your own dreamworld. The lucid dream is thus a
curious blend of the conscious mind and the world of the subconscious, and such
dreams are often particularly vivid and heightened. Some people fall into lucid
dreaming quite easily and naturally, without really trying. Sometimes lucid
dreaming occurs when a dreamer experiences something so odd and inconsistent
with reality that she is shocked into awareness.

If you are not lucky enough to experience lucid dreaming easily, there are
still methods you can use to train yourself to do it. One way is to pick an
object or simple action, which, when it occurs in a dream, will signal you that
you are dreaming. For example, Carlos Castaneda, in his book
Journey to
Ixtlan,
describes how his teacher, Don Juan, instructed him to look at his
hands in his dreams to trigger the lucid state. You can program yourself to use
anything as your signal. You might also check your notes on any spontaneous
lucid dreams you have had and try to pinpoint common images that might be used
as triggers in future dreams.

The only danger in lucid dreaming is that too much dream control might reduce
the richness of the spontaneous dream imagery and interfere with the messages
coming from the subconscious. If you constantly change your dreams to make them
turn out the way you want, you may be missing out on the chance to work out your
inner conflicts and resolve your problems. The goal is to learn to confront
problems in dreams, and shape and use these energies, rather than control them.

Trance

I have a hard journey to Asgard. Sleipnir is slow and sleepy.
We travel to the root of the world tree that lies by Urd's well. I see a figure
there in a brown cloak. We next travel across some plains and then across
Bifrost, the rainbow bridge. We pass by Valhalla, Odin's hall, and turn to
Frigg's dwelling, Fensalir. All of Frigg's goddesses appear briefly, in the
order in which I have met them. Syn, the last, pops her head out of the kitchen
and motions me out the back door. I again see a figure wearing a brown
cloak—mud-brown and coarsely spun, and tattered and worn as well—seated on a
stone bench, or a rock. I come to the bench and see that a woman sits there. She
is very slight and fragile looking, with long, honey-blond hair. At first she
seems very young; then I think she must be in her early forties. She seems
ageless.

We go to a snowy wood; the snow is not deep, but similar
to that found in early fall or late spring—patches of snow here and there. We
walk through the forest together. She is a companion and a teacher to me,
quietly wise and simple—a nature woman. At last Vor puts an arm around my
shoulders and guides me to sit on a rock. She is very quiet; she bids me to
listen to nature, to watch and hear things in the woods. She motions me to stop
my inner and outer chattering and experience the woods, myself, the
moment—to be, to listen to how the world is and how I feel, not to plan
everything so rigidly. Vor makes plans in terms of centuries or ages, not in
days or weeks. I move toward her across a slushy, icy patch in the path. As my
foot steps on that icy patch, I fall through the ground and awaken with a jerk
in my own world.

My experiences with Vor were cloudy and difficult to
interpret. Perhaps that is in keeping with her nature as a seeress and
wisewoman. The kind of wisdom she offers is not immediately accessible. It is an
experiential knowledge that grows and develops slowly. She governs the ability
to interpret unspoken motivations and subtle actions, to sense what is really
going on. Vor can be invoked for help in acquiring this type of wisdom, for
shamanic-style workings, or for any type of divination, tranceworking, or
dreamwork. She could also be useful for “women's mysteries”—rituals for puberty,
marriage, pregnancy, and birthing.

Ritual