Skáldskapr: Understanding Seiðr, or Nordic magic.

In this week’s episode I’d like to broach the subject of magic. Today I’d like to explain what magic is, and ultimately how it has been applied to many individual’s everyday life. Many people immediately rush in with their claims of evil practices, or darker magic, without an indication as to what it really means.

Thinking about the historic development of the idea behind magic. So, magic has been around for as long as humans have been standing upright, although I do believe that the basic principles exist within the instinct thoughts of the animal kingdom. This would indicate that some degree existed in the ancestors of the Anatomical Modern Humans (approx 200 kya). As far as as our discussion here, the practice and understanding of what’s recognized as “magic”, we’ll begin the tract at the Gauls of Eastern Europe at the change of the epoch. From the Gauls, we see the evolution to the druids of Celtic origin.

Obviously my perspective of magic comes from my deep-seated beliefs in the Norse practices. These Norse practices evolved from the Celtic migration through Germany across the Elba River as the Germanic tribes moved further north. I personally believe that we find a substantial amount of the animistic beliefs of the Northern Sami peoples contained within the legends of the now northern Celts. According to legends of the Norse, there are three forms of magic that the Germanic Tribes adopted from the Celtic beliefs of the southern parts of Europe of the time.

• Seidr Magic, which was later called “Shamanism” dedicated individuals to the practice of focusing external spiritual forces to manipulate the physical realm. The title “Shaman” would be applied later by theologians as it is associated to many different societies and practices. I feel a strong connection to the Northern Sami people within Seidr magic.
• Spa craft (Thule), which was the magic that used the control of intrinsic energies to manipulate the physical plane of existence. This type of magic was more European at its core, with much more influence from the Druidism from the Celts to the south. In reality this type of magic was considered to be more prophetic, or future looking, so this was the group that your (later) fortune tellers would be included in.
• Galdr Magic, is the most popular of the three, and for the most part is the only one of the three types that is not considered evil or dark by the monotheistic practices that would follow.

One of the major points of interest that drew my attention to the idea of the principles of magic, was the adoption and banning of the practice by the monotheistic church. The idea that they sing hymns every weekend during their worship, the rest of galdr magic was banned. This intrigued me, so I decided that, while the condemned the practice of other worship, they attempted to use galdr magic within their own doctrine, by singing their hymns instead.

Having outlined the three types according to Norse beliefs, let’s talk about their use. When one visits the vastness of nothing important that we call the internet, one can find thousand of sites, and thousands of books about the fine art of magic. Of the forty books I’ve read about the arts throughout the migration in Europe, I have yet to discover an incantation that contradicts my personal belief in the application of magic. With no further delay, my theory in magic can be described more accurately with an analogy:

You are walking down a path. The path is well known to you, and quite comfortable to walk. There are exciting things happening all around you on either side of the path. You decide that you would rather ride a horse, than walk. So, you utter a little incantation “please god send me a horse”. What you can’t see is the moment you utter those words, the spirits around you swing into action and begin their game of telephone to reach the spirits around the horse, and around anyone who can open the gate. You can’t see this happening, because it’s a way up the road. The spirits at the other end begin sending suggestions to the horse and gatekeeper, and continue to do so. Ultimately the gatekeeper opens the gate, and the spirits guide the horse to intersect with your path. This was either a prayer, or magic, as you can see, they accomplish the same objective.

The most interesting phenomenon about the use of magic, as defined in antiquity is that the modern religious practices captured the practice of magic, and rebranded it, and sold it to the general population as “good news”. Ultimately if you boil away all the rhetoric, you can clearly see where a “prayer” is absolutely identical to uttering a magic spell.

The underlying principle here is that our spells initialize the spiritual world to complete whatever task we have asked. There are however, complications to the completion of our request. There are certain events that may lead to the abandonment of our spell/prayer, let’s look at those:

1. Our Aura. Believe it or not, but this is “far and away” the most important of all the factors. If the incantation is demanding one thing, while the aura presents something totally the spirits will side with the aura every time. Which may not be what we desire. The aura is absolutely critical and expressing our intent to the spiritual world. It will actually provide the energy at which to complete the spell’s outcome.  To invoke magic by incantation one must use one’s aura to do this.
2. Request type, resource. We know that the energy necessary to create something from nothing resides with the deities alone. While both those on the physical and spiritual planes have their own energy, it is not enough to create matter from nothing. So, if our spell is seeking to create something from nothing, then we require our deity to hear our spell and provide the necessary energy to do that. These deities are bound by “the fates” who ensure that true planes stay in balance. The fates were some of the first  spirits created by the splitting of the original deities. To have a successful spell or prayer, we must receive the correct resources to make it happen.
3. Trajectory shift. Most incomplete spells, or prayers occur when the issuer decides to change their life’s trajectory. Many people issue spells, but then decide (either consciously or unconsciously) to change their needs and/or wants before they have the opportunity to come to fruition. Spells and prayers don’t automatically change with you, as it is the issuer’s energy is what provides the energy for the tasks necessary, so when that fades, so too does everyone’s ambition to get it done.
4. Contrary requests. As mentioned before there is a substantial conflict when the request doesn’t match the aura of the issuer. In addition when the issuer utters an incantation that conflicts with a current request currently in process of completion. While the drop in issuer energy will cause the original request to fade, it’s not immediate, so a contrary request will result in the contrary request being ignored.
5. Intention. Ah yes, intention. This is another critical factor in magic spells through to completion, or having one’s prayers answered, and it is a critical component to one’s aura. Intention. While we may mutter a lot of words throughout our day, and we might mean them (in the moment), we do not intend to act upon them. Herein lies the difference between wishing for something, and casting a spell to bring it to fruition. The intention is displayed on the individuals aura when intending to cast a spell, of incant a prayer.

When we are considering our magic, again I come from the Dane perspective, we need to have an undeniable belief in the success. Once the spell is incanted, our spiritual entities take over and begin the chain of events that need to occur for the spells outcome to be realized. It is our intention that is exercised through our aura that provides the energy necessary to complete the task. We need to instantiate the desire for success throughout their entire process, from incantation, to completion.

When we discuss the idea behind creating something from absolute nothing, we need to understand that this level of energy is reserved for those entities within the deity level. As far as most things that mortals don’t comprehend is that the spiritual plane completes most requests, by nudging physical forces and entities to align up to an individual’s request. Now, one part we haven’t discussed is when the universe has a collection of requests from one side of a request, and a collection of requests from the other side. What happens when there is an energetic tie? The deity will favor one side or the other, this “favor” equates to more energy pushing for one side versus the other. This tips the balance.

While magic, and prayers are all about energy distribution. When one deeply engages in either of these activities, the amount of energy that is focused through the aura is then applied to every stage of the process. However, in 99% of the cases, somehow the individual changes their trajectory in their life using free will, and the change redirects the energy projection. These are very powerful considerations that we should make when attempting to harness the power of magic for our desires. The next time we involve ourself in deep prayer, or magic spell incantation, we need to focus all our energy, and stay focused on the successful outcome until it comes to fruition.