Mothers come home to me
Sisters tend to me
Daughters re-weave me
Grandmothers sing to me
Mothers come hold me
Sisters come love me
Daughters come dance with me
Grandmothers see me
Mothers sustain me
Sisters stand by me
Daughters be proud of me
Grandmothers welcome me
Mothers I come to you
Sisters I tend to you
Daughters I re-weave you
Grandmothers I sing to you
Mothers I hold you
Sisters I love you
Daughters I dance with you
Grandmothers I see you
Mothers I sustain you
Sisters I stand by you
Daughters I am proud of you
Grandmothers I welcome you
Written and performed by Maggie Cunningham of Magin Rose ©2020
Mothers, sisters, grandmothers. Be with me at my hearth. Offer me your wisdom. Let this flame be an offering to you. Let my song sooth you. Let this wine quench your thirst and this bread bless your own sacred hearth.
In my sacred hearth the Disir come. Gathering around my fire, their figures shrouded in hooded cloaks. Hands busy upon the spindle. Their song joins mine, or mine theirs. We become one. I am reunited with those who have never left me.
The Living Dísir
We are the living future of the Dísir. We crossed from the outer realm and were woven into this world for a time. And when we leave, we too will become a thread in the tapestry of the lives that come after us.
The Dísir are often spoken of as ancestral spirits—those who came before us, who shaped our lives with their strength, their wisdom, and sometimes, their silence. But they are not confined to the past. They are present. They are moving through us, and some of them are alive today.
We may feel them in a grandmother who held the family together with stories and quiet strength. In a mentor who saw something in us no one else did. In a friend who walks with us through shadow and through joy. In the stranger whose art, voice, or ritual stirred something deep and ancient inside.
In my own practice, the circle of the Dísir includes both those who have crossed the threshold of death and those still very much alive. I curate this circle consciously—not out of obligation or lineage alone, but by asking who embodies the sacred feminine in my life? Who brings presence, depth, nourishment, power? Who speaks the language of the soul in a way I understand?
This isn’t about excluding men. It’s about vibration. The Dísir circle vibrates with the frequency of the sacred feminine, and those who meet that resonance—whatever their gender, sexuality, species, or form—can be part of it.
Some of the beings in my circle are human. Others are land spirits, animals, ancestors of blood, spirit, or place. Some I speak with regularly in prayer or dream. Some simply hold a place in my heart, a kind of energetic honoring that I return to over and again.
Your Dísir circle is yours to craft. It is not the same as your human support network, where boundaries and negotiation are necessary. This is a sacred space of spiritual alignment, where the core threads are your well-being and your becoming. It is a tapestry that strengthens you, speaks to you, and calls you to remember that you, too, are part of this lineage.
One day, you may become part of someone else’s Dísir circle. What legacy are you weaving?
✧ Vanadis
“Vanadís” — Lady of the Vanir — is one of Freyja’s most ancient titles. She who holds the mysteries of love, seiðr, death, and desire. She who teaches us how to be whole.
From 2023 to 2025, I undertook an apprenticeship with Freyja as patroness of my Reclaim Your Magic retreats and my embodiment practice. Over those years, the title Vanadís began to glow more brightly for me—Freyja not just as a goddess of love or battle or death, but as the sovereign of something older and more relational: the web of wise, powerful, feminine beings who shape our world.
Where Frigg appears surrounded by her handmaidens, the Asyniur, in clear expressions of collaborative feminine power, Freyja often walks alone. She is passionate, potent, sexually autonomous—and all too easy to frame within modern lenses as the seductress, the femme fatale, the “loose woman.” She becomes, in this framing, the despised twin of the Victorian “angel in the house.”
But Freyja’s lessons don’t dwell in shame. She calls us to peel back those false dichotomies—virgin and whore, maiden and hag, saint and temptress—and to remember something much older. That it is not only possible, but sacred, to give and receive love, pleasure, succour, friendship, and power. That sensuality and sovereignty can walk hand-in-hand.
To me, Freyja as Vanadís is not a solitary figure after all. Her circle is invisible, ancestral, energetic—like a great hall of voices laughing, singing, offering fierce wisdom to those who would listen. Perhaps this is part of why we don’t see her in company. The company is there. We’ve just forgotten how to hear it.
In her presence, I’ve come to better understand the magics of the Dísir. To see that their power is not fragile, demure, or tucked away—but vibrant, embodied, and sometimes fearsome in its refusal to be diminished. It’s the laughter of women who have nothing to prove, only wisdom to share.
You might think of this as a kind of Red Tent space—like Anita Diamant’s novel, or the UK programme Loose Women, or Donna Ashworth’s poetry in To the Women. These are glimpses, echoes, of what sacred feminine community can be when it is given room to breathe.
Source Note
Freyja is called Vanadís in Skáldskaparmál (Prose Edda), where she is referred to as one of the foremost goddesses, connected to beauty, love, fertility, and seiðr.
footnotes from the sage
The word Dísir is the plural form of dís, an Old Norse term broadly meaning “lady” or “female spirit.” It appears in skaldic poetry, sagas, and eddic verse as a title both noble and numinous—sometimes referring to goddesses, sometimes to powerful female ancestors, and at times to guiding spirits of fate.
The root dís is thought to derive from the Proto-Germanic dīsiz, and may be related to the Indo-European dheigh- or dhīs-, meaning “to form, shape, or build”—an echo, perhaps, of their association with weaving fate and shaping life. In some contexts, dísir seems nearly synonymous with nornir (the Norns), valkyrjur (the Valkyries), and fylgjur (spiritual followers or fetches), suggesting a wide and layered field of feminine spiritual agency in the Northern tradition. Disir has also been linked to the Indo-Eureopean root word *dhēi- for suckling or nourishing.
✧ Who should be in my Disir Circle?
The Dísir circle is not fixed by blood or birth. It is woven by resonance. You are not just part of it—you are its weaver.
One of the most powerful aspects of working with the Dísir is that their circles are not confined by strict rules or roles. They don’t ask for dogma. They ask for alignment.
In my experience, it’s helpful to think of two circles: an inner Dísir circle, which is spiritual, and an outer Dísir circle, which is social. Both are sacred. Both are fluid. And both are curated by you.
Your inner Dísir circle is made up of the unseen beings—ancestors, guides, deities, land spirits, and perhaps the energetic imprint of living people—who nourish your soul and resonate with your sacred feminine. Some may walk with you for life. Others may come to teach something specific and then step back. Their presence is spiritual, vibrational, felt more than seen.
Your outer Dísir circle includes the living people in your life who embody the sacred feminine for you. Those whose presence grounds, challenges, reflects, and enriches your becoming. This circle might include close friends, elders, mentors, chosen family. These are the relationships that help shape your lived experience of magic, kinship, and care.
The edges of these circles can blur. Someone may move from your outer circle into your inner one—or vice versa. A teacher may become a friend. A beloved may become an ancestor.
When I think of this, I think of my friend Erika. She was a brilliant light in my social Dísir circle—kind, determined, wise, grounded, utterly herself. Since her passing, her presence has shifted. She’s no longer here in the everyday sense, but I feel her in dream, in stillness, in the places where the veil is thin. She now sits in my inner circle, reminding me why the work is important, offering a joyous, wry comment at just the right time. The weaving changed, but the thread remained.
Curating these circles isn’t about control—it’s about intention. It’s about recognising who truly supports your sacred self, and giving yourself permission to honour, release, or reweave as needed. This, too, is magic.
And while the Dísir are most often described as feminine beings, that does not mean your circle must be only women—or that it must conform to any binary understanding of gender. What matters is resonance. If someone—human or other—embodies the sacred feminine for you, they belong.
✧ When the Feminine has wounded you
Not all of us come to the sacred feminine from a place of ease.
Some of us have experienced the mother wound—a sense of abandonment, criticism, or emotional loss from those meant to nurture us. Some of us have struggled to connect with femininity at all, finding it alien, painful, or bound up in societal expectations we could never meet. If that is part of your story, know this: you are not alone.
The Dísir Circle is not a family reunion in the conventional sense. It is a sacred space—curated, resonant, loving. You may not find Great Aunt Maud there, if her presence harmed more than helped. Or perhaps a part of her shows up—not the hard edges or harsh words, but that fleeting moment in a quiet kitchen when she told you you were clever, or tucked a secret sweet into your pocket. A single ember of truth, preserved in love.
The Dísir Circle builds itself around your well-being and becoming. Yes, there may be tough love—but never cruelty. Never harm. This is a place where sovereignty is not only honoured, but restored.
Working with goddesses like Frigg and Freyja can be profoundly healing here. Frigg holds space for wisdom and stillness. Freyja reminds us that power and pleasure are not shameful. Both can help you stand more fully in your own sovereignty within the circle. Both can guide the healing of feminine wounds—not by pushing you toward idealised womanhood, but by helping you reconnect to the truth of your own sacred essence, whatever form it takes.
✧ Rites of passage
Not all thresholds are meant to be crossed alone. Some call for witnesses. Some call for song. Some call for the Dísir.
When we look across time and culture, we often see that masculine rites of passage are shaped by separation. The initiate is sent out, tested, expected to face challenges alone, and return with proof of success. The individual triumphs. The goal is mastery, winning, achievement.
By contrast, the feminine mysteries tend to centre around collaboration and relationship. They unfold in the company of others—whether physically present or spiritually holding space. Even when a woman births alone, she is not truly alone: her body, her baby, her ancestors, her spirit allies are all part of the threshold crossing. These are rites woven in community, not carved out through isolation.
Stories, songs, rituals, and shared witnessing are not just embellishments to the passage—they are the passage. They carry meaning, wisdom, and emotional continuity from one generation to the next. And the Dísir are keepers of that thread. They sing across lifetimes. They show up for the liminal spaces. They hold the edges of becoming.
In my personal experience, the deepest seiðr rites require collaboration. The seer cannot do everything alone—nor should they. To fully enter the altered state, to open to vision and spirit, others must take on key roles: holding the space, singing the energy, listening with sacred presence, negotiating with spirit when needed. This is not a solo journey. It is a weaving of trust, skill, and shared magic.
We also see echoes of this in older Northern rites. The symbel—a communal ritual of speech and honour—is often overseen by a woman, who ensures the integrity of memory and vow. And útiseta, the “sitting out” for wisdom, includes the essential return: bringing what you have gained back into the circle of the living. Into innangard—the enclosure of kin.
The Dísir know that transformation isn’t just about crossing the threshold. It’s about being received on the other side. It’s about knowing that someone will hold your story and remember who you are becoming.
✧ Creating a Hearthspace for your Disir
Traditionally, the Dísir were honoured in the home, tended by women on behalf of the whole family. These were not grand shrines—they were woven into the very rhythm of life: in the kitchen, by the fire.
Your hearthspace for the Dísir doesn’t need to be ornate. It needs to be true—true to your connection, your lineage, your spirit circle. It is a place for intimacy, memory, and quiet knowing. A place where presence accumulates.
My own Dísir altar sits beside my bed. It’s a space I see every morning and every night. It holds:
- A replica of an ancient plaque from pre-Roman Bath, depicting three women—the kind of trio often associated with the Dísir, fates, or ancestral goddesses.
- Five hand-painted Russian dolls, each representing one of the elements.
- A branch and threads from my altar during both of my pregnancies—threads of life and transformation.
- A fox-shaped candleholder, honouring the kin-fetch of my mother’s family, whose surname was Fox.
- Gifts for my Hearth dragon who I count amongst my Disir
- A bracelet I made when I was pregnant with my eldest son – inscribed with the Algiz rune which is wonderful for calling in the protective force of the Disir
- Changing items: crystals, dried flowers, feathers, and other gifts from the land or moments of ritual.
- Runes or oracle cards again selected for a particular period.
- A stone fron Iceland which I visited with two of my living Disir – I felt very connected to the land there!
On my bedroom fireplace—now filled with candles instead of flame—I keep a small statue that represents the Dísir. I think they like having a presence by the fire. Even without a hearth flame, the symbolism remains.
This altar is part of my relationship with my inner Dísir circle. It’s not only a place for honouring the past, but for curating the present. Sometimes I light a candle, speak a name, place a new item. Sometimes I do nothing but feel their presence. The hearth holds.
If you’re just beginning a relationship with the Dísir, your hearthspace can begin with a single flame. A bowl of water. A name written on paper. What matters is the intention—to listen, to tend, to remember.
✧ Remembering the Asyniur
Saga is said to be one of the Dísir. A goddess of story. But the Asyniur do not crave the kind of remembering often associated with her name—the heroic tale, the epic history. They live instead in the fragments: in song, soil, gesture, dream.
We don’t know the Asyniur as we know the gods. Their stories weren’t preserved in long heroic cycles. Their names remain, flickering in the margins of the old texts. But I don’t believe that’s because they were unimportant. I believe it’s because their mysteries were not meant to be shouted from the walls of skaldic halls. They were meant to be lived. Tended. Shared.
Frigg and her handmaidens. The goddesses of health, fate, protection, harvest, love, prophecy. We remember them not by reconstructing every myth, but by stepping into relationship. By listening. By making space for them in the way we care for each other and the earth.
They come back to us in a hawthorn hedge, a dream, the rhythm of a weaving song, a sudden urge to light a candle or plant something in memory. We find them again in our acts of devotion, not in our declarations of belief.
Lofn, who blesses forbidden love, shared a tale in The Tree’s Daughter—one of the twelve stories I received from the Asyniur. In her voice, I heard this:
“Hawthorn mother, Birch wife, Old wise Yew. All must be honoured.”
There was a silence, a silence that comes when an undeniable, plain-as-the-button-in-your-belly truth is spoken.
The silence spoke of empty seats at once-full tables, cribs hollow and unmoving, wells run dry and dwindling harvests.
The silence spoke like a drum waiting to be beaten.
The people had only fragments. Ribbons, songs, offerings. They beat the bounds, danced the Maypole, cleansed with fire and scryed with water—without always remembering why. And still, the trees responded.
The Hawthorn glade was splendid with ribbons and flowers.
Baskets of cakes nestled at the roots of the Birch trees.
The Yew grove remained bare—but beneath her boughs, old coins and wine soaked the earth. Silent prayers filled the air.
This is how the Asyniur are remembered. Not in lineage charts, but in sacred acts and stories offered from the heart. They ask not for recitation. They ask to be lived into.
✧ Relationships with the Dead
The dead are not gone. They are waiting—for song, for memory, for presence. The Dísir walk the veil not to haunt, but to hold.
My relationship with the dead deepened through pregnancy loss. I began to visit the cemetery near my home—not with flowers, but with song. I would stand among the graves and sing. At first, I didn’t know who I was singing to. I only knew I needed to. That someone needed to be sung to.
One day, in that quiet tending, I received a vision. I saw women like myself, standing in liminal spaces, singing to the dead. I understood in that moment that the Dísir weave not only forward into the lives of those yet to come, but backward into the realms of the dead. They are the weavers of legacy, but also of memory.
When we tend the dead, we are joining the Dísir.
There came a point when I stopped grieving only for myself, and stepped into something greater—a circle of grief that belongs to all of us. A grief born not only of loss, but of love. And in that space, I found the Dísir waiting—not to erase the sorrow, but to hold it with me.
The Dísir teach me that maintaining a loving relationship with the dead is part of how we learn to live with grief. That tending, remembering, and ritual can reweave what has been torn. They hold the connective thread between us and the ancestors—those of blood, of spirit, of land.
If you know the names of your beloved dead, offer them to the Dísir in circle. You can honour them through altar and act. One of the most healing rituals I practice is at my ancestral altar: a space that holds a small bell, gifted by my grandmother, which I ring to call in the spirits of the dead. After the bell sounds, I speak their names—those I have loved, those I want to honour. When the naming is complete, I ring the bell again to close. There is also a cup set aside only for the dead, used for offerings of water, wine, mead or whatever is fitting.
You don’t need to know all your ancestors to begin. You don’t need a list of names. You need presence, love, and the willingness to remember. And if you don’t feel the connection yet, begin with the land beneath your feet. Begin with song, even if it is just a whisper.
✧ Sexuality and Sensuality
The Dísir do not turn away from the body. They have lived in it, died in it, and woven themselves through it. They know its pain, its power, its pleasure—and they do not shame any part of it.
For a long time, I struggled with my body. Puberty came with confusion. Illness brought betrayal. Pregnancy brought awe and grief in equal measure. Through each of these thresholds, it was my Dísir circle—those spirit-teachers of the sacred feminine—who held me.
They didn’t give me a tidy narrative about beauty or health or sexuality. They didn’t ask for reverence or righteousness. They simply stayed with me. They offered presence. They showed me that pleasure is sacred, not shameful. That my body is a home—not a battleground.
The Dísir teach me how to find pleasure in living. In the warmth of food prepared with love. In the texture of blankets at the hearth. In breath, skin, sunlight, softness, sensation. In the relationship with earth, not as something to control or produce from, but as something to be in rhythm with.
Their healing presence helps unravel the cultural threads of dominance, consumption, and productivity that have wrapped around our senses. They invite us back into a slower, more intimate way of being.
There is no experience you can have—no emotion, no moment of the body—that one of your ancestral Dísir has not known. There is nothing you can feel, fear, or desire that is not shared, understood, and witnessed with compassion. They are not idealised spirits of perfection. They are the thread of lived, loving, embodied memory. And they want us to come home to ourselves.
✧The Weaving of the Second Skin
The first skin is the body, woven in the womb. The second is the life you craft: your name, your talents, your stories, your bonds. The Dísir help us weave—and read—this second skin.
Some of you may remember I first explored this idea during the Winter Nights tales in 2024. I spoke then about the second skin—the one we build over time. Unlike the lyke (the physical body), the second skin is shaped by experience, ritual, identity. It’s made of names and clothes, birth runes and stories, talents and wisdom. It is both visible and invisible. It wraps around us, and it connects us to others.
This skin isn’t grown in solitude. It’s woven in relationship—with land, with people, with spirit. The Dísir play a key role in this process. They are not only the weavers—they are the readers of the weave. The ones who can look at your life and see what’s been tangled, what’s still growing, what needs blessing, and what needs release.
We sometimes speak of hamingja—the ancestral luck-hoard—as the force passed down through lineages, shaped by the deeds of our ancestors and ourselves. It is often associated with boldness, honour, success. The kind of luck that is earned or inherited through bravery and action.
But the second skin is different. It holds all within it—including hamingja—but also the quiet choices, the sorrows, the forgotten talents, the subtle threads of intuition and care. It is not just the story of what you’ve done—it’s the story you are becoming. It is the choosing of the threads.
Traditionally, the altars of the Dísir were located in the home. This isn’t incidental. It’s because the home is where this second skin is constantly being made and remade—through our decisions, our relationships, our nourishment, our rituals. This is where we need their guidance most.
There’s a powerful image from the Eddic poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, in which the Norns are described weaving Helgi’s fate at the time of his birth:
“They wove the threads of fate,
When Helgi was born,
The bold-hearted prince,
Under the hall of the moon;
They wove it in strands of gold,
And fastened it in the north.”
The Dísir, like the Norns, do not simply shape fate—they help us live it. They guide us through the process of making our own second skin strong, beautiful, and true.
✧The Living Dísir – Legacy
We are not only held by the Dísir. We are becoming them. One day, we will be the ones our descendants call upon in quiet moments, in songs, in grief, in joy.
When we speak of the Dísir, we often look backwards—toward the ancestors, the ancient goddesses, the ones who walked before. But the Dísir are not simply historical or mythic. They are relational and ongoing. They walk beside us now. And we, too, are walking toward becoming them.
Each act of love, of courage, of care—each moment of tending the land, listening to the unseen, speaking truth, or holding space—becomes a thread in the weave of our legacy. Not for fame. Not for glory. But because we are part of the great circle of the living and the dead, and we are always, already, becoming ancestors.
You don’t have to be remembered in a saga to be remembered in a soul.
Some of us may already be part of another’s Dísir circle. Someone we taught. Someone we healed. Someone we held in a dark hour. And one day, we will leave behind more than a name. We will leave behind presence.
The Dísir remind us that our lives are not isolated. They are threads in a great tapestry, woven forward and backward, inward and outward. Our healing becomes part of the ancestral healing. Our becoming clears the way for others to become. Our legacy begins not in death—but in how we choose to live now.
📚 Suggested Sources
Please do share your own favourite sources about the Disir so we can include them as part of our collective wisdom.
Foundational Texts and Mythic References
- The Poetic Edda (esp. Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, Völuspá)
- The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson (Skáldskaparmál includes Freyja as Vanadís)
- Landnámabók (mentions of dísir and ancestral practices)
- Eiríksmál (vision of the Dísir greeting the dead)
Explorations of Seidr and Norse Spiritual Practice
- Jenny Blain – Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic
- Katie Gerrard – Seidr: The Gate is Open
- Diana L. Paxson – The Way of the Oracle and Essential Asatru
Textile, Legacy, and Women’s Cultural Work
Michèle Hayeur Smith – The Valkyries’ Loom
Feminine Wisdom and Earth-Based Practice
- Anita Diamant – The Red Tent
- Sharon Blackie – If Women Rose Rooted
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés – Women Who Run With the Wolves
- Emma Restall Orr – Living Druidry
Contemporary Pagan and Heathen Perspectives
- Hilda Ellis Davidson – Roles of the Northern Goddesses and Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe
- Sheila McGrath – The Hearths of the Asyniur
- Lara Veleda Vesta – Wild Soul Runes
Poetry and Remembering
- Donna Ashworth – To the Women
- Nikita Gill – Fierce Fairytales
- Terry Tempest Williams – When Women Were Birds
