The white surface layer of snow crunches beneath my feet, protesting at the intrusion of my fur-lined boots upon the silence. My hands are protected by midnight blue mittens embroidered with gold stars. A shawl is tied in a cross shape over my chest and behind my back. I wear a ridiculous hat, similar to one I had as a child, woollen pom-poms bedecking it in cheerful colours and tied snugly under my chin. My breath is pluming out of me, painting the crisp air white. What I breathe back in freezes me from the inside out. This is Nifelheim, or, technically, the borderland between Helheim and Nifelheim. Somewhere in the far distances the towering walls of the realm of the dead loom higher than the thinnest echelons of earth’s atmosphere. On the other side Nifelheim, mist home, the realm of ice stretches out as far as imagining. Distance and direction have no meaning on the world tree, there is only intention – or so my guides tell me.
My breath is slowly freezing my lungs and I quickly lift my hand up to grasp the pendant I have donned for this journey. My mitten helpfully dissolves for just a second or two so I can hold then pendant in my palm. I feel it wriggling as it connects with my body. The memory of fire stirs within it and it forms into Sowilo, the rune of the Sun. In its heart, a tiny crystal phial holds a spark of fire from Muspelheim – the realm of fire on the other ‘side’ of creation. Sowilo glows and my hand tingles. With each beat my heart drinks in the heat from the pendant, pumping life force energy back into my cooling blood.
I walk just a few steps and, ahead of me, a mirror with gilt edges stands improbably in the snow. It looks as if it has just been placed, no frost upon its surface. As I approach it I see, just behind my own reflection, the figure of a woman. She is dressed in garb very similar to mine, I have not met her before but I know what she is. An edge-dweller, a cottage-keeper in this space between worlds. This particular woman will go on to tell me that the cottages on the edge of the realm of the dead are where memories of place are kept, transported somehow before the inhabitants crossed into the lands where all is forgotten and rebirthed.
But I am jumping ahead. For now, I turn from the reflection in the mirror and follow the woman who stands behind me. I see the familiar outline of her thick-walled cottage, the buildings for her animals clustered close against it. I hear dogs barking and know that the deer will be munching on the hay, a study pony or two stamping in the stalls. We duck down to enter the cottage, passing from cold into the relative heat of the interior. Here life remains, sustained by the hearth fire where, long ago, I received my spark of fire from Muspelheim.
This is what it is to travel upon the northern world tree. Learning the perils slowly. Crafting alliances bit by bit. Receiving wisdom. A pair of mittens. A guide to show me where and how to craft a pendant to contain the fire.
Travel into the realm of ice unprepared and it will take you. Preserve you, in the death dream. This is an age of re-awakening – don’t strain to fast before you can see clearly where you are heading.
We sit down by the fire and the woman introduces herself. I watch as she gathers herbs from the pots placed around the walls and brews them into a tea. I had always thought that was the sole purpose of these women who choose to live alone on the edge-of-edges: to offer healing. There is invariably a tea. This one fills my heart centre almost immediately. I feel blocks between heart and throat being teased out. When I return to my body there will be a lot of coughing. If I’m lucky it won’t manifest into something worse – sometimes it does, as the soul gives up its woundings and they travel out of the system.
Today though, I notice some differences. This woman reminds me of the second cottage-keeper I was to meet here. The one who led me across the land to the place where my pendant was forged. There was a fierceness about that one, a sense of adventure. This new mistress of the space has books on a shelf. Very unusual indeed. These women are keepers of an oral tradition and normally have little use for the constraints and rules of writing. I am eager to learn more about her – for if she has let me see them it means she wants to teach me something. Which she does.
To travel upon the northern world tree, Yggdrasil, is to pick up the remnants of an atlas torn up long ago. Most of the pieces are lost, hardly any of them fit together and, when they do, they make no sense at all. We seek to impose our understanding of our own world upon realms that have entirely different rules. How can the Well of Wyrd be both at the bottom of the World Tree and next to Asgard which exists at the very top? It can and it does. Because the rules are different. We have to look beyond the written sources and connect with spirit guides because it is not just that we have lost most of what our ancestors knew – but because our needs are different now. We are multi-heritage, woven souls. We are uprooted and disconnected in ways our ancestors could not even imagine. Our own world, Midgard, is evolving in ways we cannot predict. The technology of writing that over-wrote oral cultures is itself under threat. We do not know whether we are ultimately destroyers or saviours. We are walking the edge, teetering on the brink.
Travelling the tree unpicks our notions of what reality must mean, how it must operate. It is a soul-enlarging experience. You come back changed, bigger, more hopeful, more you. It is a medicine for a world and people disillusioned with themselves.
Across our human world there are still cultures that operate in parallel with ‘non-ordinary’ realities. Spirit-worlds that nourish the soul, offer healing and paths to wisdom. I believe that, if you are called to work with the northern world tree, it is because your soul requires its unique forms of healing and wisdom. Every time I visit the edge-dweller’s cottage the tea is different, because the medicine I need is different. Maybe your ancestry is the link, perhaps it is the land you live on – or perhaps, this time around, your soul is simply vibrating at the same frequency as Yggdrasil.
It can be daunting to take the first steps out of the narrow confines of the human parts of Midgard (Middle Earth – which is much bigger than a ball of rock circling a star in vast a universe of stars). It is true that we do not know the rules and we can get into trouble. The written sources are limited and offer more questions than answers for the serious practitioner. It can be tempting to try and retro-fit Yggdrasil upon other shamanic models that are better known. Asgard could be the upper world of core shamanism, midgard and some of the more dangerous worlds could the middle and the lower world, well. there are certainly some primal bits. But Yggdrasil is as different to the 3-world model as Oz is to Kansas. Like the ancestors of old, climbing aboard their long ships there is only one way to find out – and that is to go.
Go because you need to. Go because you are called to.
If you are looking for a human guide to help you on the way – get in touch.
