A number of Germanic polytheists do not approve of the word Witch as a self-identifier, saying one should use the word seiðkona, spaekona, haegtessa, or something of the like. Part of the reasoning seems to be based in Wiccaphobia, part of it seems to be based in the Old Norse Terms Are More Authentic (TM) mindset, but at least some of it seems to be based in the confusion over witchcraft and seiðr being the same thing. There are similarities, but they are emphatically not the same thing.

For starters, we get into etymology and word usage.  While the word is related to the Old English séoðan ('to seethe or boil' but also means 'to prepare or purify the mind'), words cognate that were in a specifically magical context are siðen and siðsa, and in a way that suggests it was only practiced by elves (ælfe or ylfe); these seem likely to have meant something similar to seiðr, and would lend credence to the myth of seiðr being a Vanic practice, since the elves and Vanir are closely related groups. However, as is noted, it was only practiced by elves, and I can safely say that if there was in fact seiðr in Anglo-Saxon England, chances are good someone would have made note of such a thing, so we can assume seiðr is not an Anglo-Saxon practice.

Seiðr is often translated as “witchcraft” in Modern English manuscripts, but it should be noted that as far as the Anglo-Saxon language, Witches were not referred to as seiðr practitioners, they were called wicca (m.) or wicce (f.), or another specialized label such as scinnlaeca (which translates “sorceror” but is a compound of scinn– “skin/phantom” and læca – “leech/healer”, lit. “phantom-healer”).

We do have two distinct forms of witchcraft seen in history: sorcery and folk magic.

The Church issued edicts against basic folk practices during the Conversion Era, such as women adding their menstrual blood to food to seduce a man, or using their man’s blood or semen to help cure an illness (as two examples), or doing things in a certain place of power (wells, old trees, springs, groves). Folk magic relies more on symbolic associations and thus sympathetic magic. Practices in later centuries, such as the Witch's bottle and putting shoes inside the walls of an old house, seem to be remnants from this time. Folk magic was practiced by the common people, and not generally distrusted until after the conversion, as this witchcraft generally ran the gamut of protecting and enhancing the home life, the sex life, fertility of body, crops, and animals, and healing: positive magic, for the most part.

Sorcery was more 'high magic', and involved more complex spell craft (particularly for healing purposes), divination, and things like 'faring forth' and shapeshifting.  The sorcerers - scinnlaeca - of old became the cunning-men/women of later history, who were sought by the community for help.  While potent, this is still different from the discipline and the magical act of seiðr.

Seiðr is something completely different.  To begin with, it is said in the primary sources to originate with Freya and the Vanir:

Njord’s daughter Freya was priestess of the sacrifices, and first taught the Asaland people the magic art, as it was in use and fashion among the Vanaland people.
-Ynglinga Saga

Freya was said later to teach the art to Odin.The kind of magic that Odin worked, which was also noted in stories of “wicked women” in the Sagas, consisted of:

    * shapeshifting
    * calming fire and storm
    * changing the weather
    * raising the dead to speak with them/gain information
    * bringing sickness and even death to people if He saw fit
    * robbing the health, intelligence, or other strength/s of one and giving to another

Since we know Odin was taught seiðr by Freya, we can assume these were part of the seiðr as practiced by the Vanir in Vanaheim.

Groa (of the eponymous Groagaldr) is another noted seið-worker, who speaks nine spells over her son Svipdag when he raises her from the dead (this in and of itself a seiðr practice). The charms were as follows:

    * to cast away the irksome by strength of will
    * that Wyrd Herself would protect and guide him
    * rivers that would drown him flow to Hel and be diminished
    * stopping foes and turning their minds to peace
    * power to break bonds and fetters
    * power to still storms at sea, and navigate tranquil waters
    * to stop frost and cold from having ill effect
    * that the spirits of the dead do no harm
    * that giants may not attack but give wisdom and abundance when met

Seiðr is most noted for being baleful magic, with multiple examples in the Sagas of seiðr being used to harm others.  In Friðjof's Saga:


Then they sent two women skilled in magic, Heiðr and Hamglama, and paid them to send such a storm upon Friðþjóf and his men that they might all be lost at sea. So they practiced their magic; they fared to the seiðhjallr with charms and sorcery. . . . Then Friðþjóf and his men found that the ship made great speed, but they knew not whither they had come, for that so great a darkness fell on them that the stem was not seen from the center, what with driving spray and storm, frost and snowdrift and bitter cold. Then Friðþjóf climbed up in the mast; and when he was mounted up he said to his fellows, ‘I see a marvelous sight. A great whale circles the ship, and I suspect that we must be near some land, and he would not let us near the land. Methinks that King Helgi does not deal with us in friendly wise: it is no loving message that he sends us. I see two women on the whale's back, and they must wield this hostile storm with their worst spells and magic. Friðþjóf and his crew managed to smite the women, and they disappeared, the whale submerged, and the storm dissipated. But back ashore it was seen that "while the two sisters were at their incantations they tumbled down from the seiðhjallr, and both their backs were broken.


From Ynglinga Saga again:

Then Drífa sent for Huld, a seið-kona, and sent Vísbur, her son by Vanlandi, to Sweden. Drífa prevailed upon Huld by gifts that she should conjure Vanlandi back to Finland or else kill him. At the time when she exercised her seiðr, Vanlandi was at Uppsala. Then he became eager to go to Finland; but his friends and counselors prevented him from doing so, saying that most likely it was the witchcraft of the Finns which caused his longing. Then a drowsiness came over him and he lay down to sleep. But he had hardly gone to sleep when he called out, saying that a mara rode him. His men went to him and wanted to help him. But when they took hold of his head the mara trod on his legs so they nearly broke; and when they seized his feet it pressed down on his head so that he died.
-Ynglinga Saga, ch. 13


Seiðr practitioners in Iceland were distrusted by the common people even before the conversion era. The word ergi was used as a pejorative for men who practiced seiðr, comparing receptiveness to the spirits to being a "bottom". (This does not mean that seiðr required a man to be gay, however; sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether or not one can seethe.) At least one account of seiðr has a seiðkona meeting an untimely end with a sealskin bag (although contrary to popular Heathen belief, it was not 'the community' neutralizing a threat, but another seiðkona murdering out of jealousy).  The reason why seiðr was distrusted seemed to have a lot to do with fearing the power of the practitioners - after all, a person who has the knowledge of how to heal someone also has the knowledge of how to hurt them; if you call on a professional to hex your neighbour, the person also has the power to eventually turn that curse on you if it suits them.

However, the lore was written by Christians, and there are other pieces of lore that were strongly coloured by Snorri's perspective.  From a logical standpoint, it seems seiðr was demonized, just as accounts of tribal shamans largely have focused on harm done to others even if that was only a small part of what they actually did.  If we look at the broader picture, we also know that the Vanir are Deities of nature, and by extension the fertility and abundance that comes with it.  The "endgame" of the Aesir initiating the war with the Vanir was likely to bring the three major players into Asgard, and Their powers with Them.  The Aesir, being power-hungry, war-like Gods, lacked the force of fertility and health in Their world.  Before the truce, the Vanir were winning the war against the Aesir with Their battle magic - which seiðr definitely looks like.  But I also believe seiðr was Their ability to heal and revitalize, as well as harm.

So we know a bit about what seiðr was used for, but most of us don't know how it was done.  In the accounts of seiðr in the lore, we mostly have records of the results, not the actual process. Indeed, the majority of those trying to reconstruct the practice of seiðr call it 'oracular seiðr' and do seership work by trancing on a high seat.  A few of these believe that Deity or spirit possession can also be called seiðr, even though we have no instances of these practices in the primary sources.  But all of this is guesswork.  And this is not really a surprise.  The lore of the Vanir cultus was all but stamped out.  We have a few surviving myths, but not enough to call it a body of 'Vanic lore'.  Seiðr as a practice with Vanic origins would also be something deliberately muted when it was brought up.

However, from a Vanatru perspective, it is still worth exploring, as a form of magic that is truly our own.  So we go on what very few clues we do have, and fill in the blanks through Divine inspiration.  We know the end results of seiðr, here are some clues as far as what seiðr was and was not, and how it was done.

Seiðr seems more akin to shamanism than to folk magic or sorcery.  Just like traditional tribal shamans have worn costumes, Thorbjorg the Little-Volva wore a costume, and we can assume that the seið-folk had a special costume they wore both as items of personal power as well as to set them apart from the common folk and denote their status and commitment.  Moreover, the seið-folk were seið-folk all the time, not just when they were accessing altered states and casting spells.  To do the magic associated with seiðr, it could not be done without a tremendous amount of self-discipline and power.  And as mentioned above, the seið-folk were often feared and mistrusted, as indeed many shamans were in their tribes.

More so than the current groups and individuals claiming to reconstruct and revive the practice of seiðr, I posit the theory that the closest analog we have to what seiðr actually looked like was the (fictional) Bene Gesserit of Dune.  The Bene Gesserit had an intense personal discipline of mind and body - most notably a martial art called "The Weirding Way" - and formal rites of passage to gain power, including a ritual where a drug (the spice melange) was ingested to meet with and access the memories of the female ancestors.  The connotations of this for Germanic polytheists should be obvious.  The Bene Gesserit, like the seið-folk of old, were feared, and known for influencing and manipulating others, but for all that they were hard with others, they were hardest on their own.  Their power was hard-won - it was not merely a practice, but an entire way of life.

Seiðr is etymologically akin to “seething”, and if we use the definition of seiðr as seething, I would explain it as follows:

The act of magic by seiðr would likely involve an emotional and/or kinesthetic experience.  Since many accounts of working seiðr involved a high seat, we can assume this was for a reason.  It seems that being up high does aid the body into shifting consciousness, and on a deeper level can be seen as symbolic as sitting upon the World Tree, particularly if the high seat was specially prepared with the sole intent of working seiðr upon it.  I personally think "seething" to create specific acts of magic - like the tribal shamans doing their work - was achieved by sitting upon a high seat and shaking or rocking and breathing differently while letting the mind go. Doing this lets the one who seethes literally slither into that veil between worlds, and work from there.

To do magic by seiðr involves making the Web of Wyrd seethe with you. By seething, you bring what is within, outside. In seething, you access primordial fire and ice, internally. You access the fire that melted ice and made water, the waters in the Well, the threads that are the waves and currents leading to Wyrd’s Well – the threads that interconnect all life on Earth, the nerves and blood vessels under our skin, shoots rising up through soil. Seething puts you in a state where you can move Wyrd around, to line up this world with your own inner worlds, or the Otherworlds. By twisting and manipulating the threads and currents of Wyrd, you can cause paths to intersect or break apart, you can heal or harm a body or mind, you can influence how things play out on the land. When you come back, you feel intense burning cold, the shock of being fully in this world again, but the threads have been changed, by your own internal changes.

When you are in that space of extreme cold fire, it is easy to freeze or burn Wyrd and speed it up or slow it down.  It is a rare person who can truly hit that “Dagaz moment” and use it to effect change, and most people who can access that state are generally aware of the workings of Wyrd and serving as a catalyst of Wyrd, and its potential consequences.

Seiðr is being able to seethe deep enough to be in both worlds, access the primordial currents of Wyrd and/or the collective unconscious.  It is literally making yourself a microcosm of the macrocosm.

Because it is an intense working, it takes its toll on you physically when you come back, more so if you do not know how to ground, do not practice psychic hygiene, and do not know how to take care of yourself. People who regularly practice a magical discipline cannot eat, rest, and do as everyone else does, but must be particularly mindful of how their lifestyle affects their mental and physical well-being.

It goes without saying that magic is not a mandatory part of worshipping the old Gods and indeed one should focus on the religion and living honourably first - any magical practice is secondary. Yet, for those of us who have abilities and aptitude, and who honour the Vanir, exploring and re-claiming the lost art of seiðr might help us to further the interests of our Gods, ourselves, the Land, and the ones we love.


© 2009-2010 Nornoriel Vanyahildë