TotM: Seidr

December's topic of the month is Seidr.

There are a few different ideas of what Seidr is on a scholarly level, though many modern practitioners of this Norse-Shamanistic practice have developed an idea of what it means to us today, typically along the lines of divination, spirit work, and trance. What are your interests, opinions, and/or experiences with Seidr, if any? Would you like to learn about it or develop the practice further?

Oh interesting!

I know next to nothing about Seidr, but I do want to learn more about it. I was actually planning on buying a few books about Seidr, Freyja, and Shamanism towards the end of this month.

I wish I had more to contribute to this topic, but like I said, I know practically nothing about Seidr.

This is a really interesting topic!
I had not heard of the term and am really just starting to research it :) I wish I had more experience with it and I can't wait to read more on it here too :)

I'm looking forward to learning more :D

I practice and study seidr, and have for awhile now (though I'm definitely not skilled in it). I would greatly enjoy increasing my understanding of it and making my practice more indepth than it currently is. I'm always down for reading any resources on it, if someone happens to stumble across some.

To me:Seidr is incredibly similar to shamanic practices from other cultures. I associate it with workings such as altered states, trance-work, divination, spiritwork and some incantation. I feel that seidr is very centered around the spiritual aspect of things. I think seidr can be a hard topic to discuss, because asGundarsson states: The chief problem in discussing seidr is defining precisely what seidr is. Much, if not most of modern seidr, is completely reconstructed with little literature to go off of.

Within the written literature that does remain about seidr, however, you see examples ofrituals for divination and clairvoyance; for seeking out the hidden, both in the secrets of the mind and in physical locations; healing the sick; bringing good luck; controlling the weather; calling game animals and fish but also to curse an individual or an enterprise; to blight the land and make it barren; to induce illness; to injure, maim and kill. In a lot of surviving literature, seidr is often portrayed to be a malicious type of magic - though you have to give pause to wonder if this practice was painted in such a perspecive because those who perserved it in written world (like Snorri for example) were Christian or of differing religions.