Alfaleith.org - Intro to Seithr and Galdr

The spiritual arts of every culture begin at their roots with the immediacy and intimacy of healing. In the Northern Tradition, healing reflects the giving nature of the Elder Kin, and their society based upon gifting in every form. Those folk that feel a natural empathy to others, or a natural gift of insight, or uncommon ability, will sometimes take up the healing arts. Women and men both naturally fall into two broad fields of expertise, and tend to follow what suits their inner nature. Both forms overlap, naturally, in many places, and sometimes a person is known to be highly skilled in aspects of both forms.

There are those that work with the deeply natural elements of field, forest and waters, and with the forces of emotion, attraction and repulsion - and most prominently, love. This form of work is called seithr, it is also called froleikr. Their work calls upon the natural forces, and the helpful vaettir or land spirits that dwell within plants, trees, waters, and stones. They work within natural cycles of nature and orlog to move them forward, interrupt their current tendencies, or start them anew. The work is most frequently done in practical forms, such as; making plant or animal based medicines, clearing water, soothing the minds and hearts of the distressed, locating water wells and fertile fields, and so forth. Their more specialized work is in hamr-faring to aide the spirit, working with the fylgja or disir of the distressed, organic symbology, song and music, and looking into the cycles for signs of ill-moving trends, a form of natural prophecy. Often this prophecy is aided by careful attention to growing and harvesting cycles, cycles of mood and social interaction, and often natural materials such as stones, reflective waters, leaves and branches, the stars, and fire. Generally, seithr is an acute observation of trends and cycles in order to gauge their flow, and alter that flow with will and love if they are found to be destructive. Health and wholeness of the community, the individual, and the land is the optimum outcome.

The other form of healing work is not as common, as it is suited to the more contemplative, less social type of folk. It works through the manipulation of natural, and man-made, forces through the specialized language of the futhark and related symbology, and through deeper states of meditation. This work relies on direct connections between the practitioner and the sources of othr, whether the source be an individual's fulltrui, his fylgja or disir, or even energies located within one of the other worlds. Those working in galdr are often poets, philosophers and warriors, as language, interaction, sound and song are worked into combinations that aide, turn aside or remove naturally, or involuntarily, moving cycles. The will is impressed into the cycle to change its pattern through sound, or when internalized, through vibration. Prophecy is worked, and can be quite far-reaching or overarching, through runestafir that are made in various forms, as well as through the observation or use of naturally occurring materials or elements such as weather, stone and fire. Generally, galdr work is a tying together of subtle forces with will and othr in order to solicit their cooperation toward an intended goal.

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