Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism

by Blain; Jenny

• ISBN13: 9780415256506
• ISBN10: 041525650X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-14
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This accessible case-study of Northern European shamanistic practice, orseidr, explores the way in which the ancient Norse belief systems evoked in the Icelandic Sagas and Eddas have been rediscovered and reinvented by groups in Europe and North America. Drawing on ethnography, religious studies, anthropology and sociology, the book examines the phenomenon of altered consciousness and the interactions ofseid-workersor shamanic practitioners with their spirit worlds in historical and political contexts. Written by a follower ofseidr, this study not only investigates, but also addresses those new communities involved in a postmodern quest for spiritual meaning.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Introducing shamanism, seior and self	1	(7)
The saying of the Norms	8	(23)
The Welling of Wyrd	8	(2)
Ritual and community	10	(2)
Cosmology, deities and `lore'	12	(3)
Seior or spae? What's in a name...	15	(4)
Seior and shamanism	19	(4)
Performance or accomplishment?	23	(3)
Seior and the anthropologist	26	(5)
The Greenland Seeress: seior as shamanistic practice	31	(16)
porbjorg the Seeress	31	(2)
Seior in today's Heathen practice	33	(6)
The road to Hel's realm	39	(4)
Neo-shamanistic seior	43	(4)
Approaching the spirits	47	(26)
The seerless as shamanistic practitioner	47	(5)
Attaining trance	52	(7)
Seior as evil magic?	59	(1)
Under the cloak	60	(3)
Approaching the spirits	63	(8)
Seior as contested practice	71	(2)
The journey in the mound	73	(16)
Narrating	73	(2)
Experiencing	75	(1)
Seeing	76	(2)
Meeting	78	(2)
Speaking	80	(2)
Listening	82	(5)
Remembering	87	(2)
Re-evaluating the Witch-Queen	89	(22)
The women of the sagas	89	(8)
Past and present: evaluating the seiowomen	97	(4)
Heior, discourse and interpretation	101	(7)
Women and magic, a continuing strand of practice?	108	(3)
Ergi seiomen, queer transformations?	111	(31)
Shamanism and resistance	111	(3)
The evidence of the sagas	114	(2)
Men and seior today	116	(13)
Many genders or `changing ones'?	129	(6)
Seior as a Sami borrowing?	135	(4)
Queer theory and the ergi seioman	139	(3)
The dance of the ancestors	142	(18)
Summarising seior	142	(1)
Discourses of contested practice	143	(9)
Reinventing Wyrd	152	(1)
Shamans and anthropologists	153	(7)
Notes	160	(6)
Bibliography	166	(13)
Index	179