Sauna - The House Of The Ancestors

The Sauna is a very old spiritual tradition, especially for the European peoples. Throughout history we find that the Northern European cultures have an important connection with the sauna. Archaeology in northern Portugal and Spain also found that the Celts and the Lusitanians used to have buildings similar to their houses only for the purpose of cleansing the body through heat and vapours. Nowadays it isn't hard to get into a sauna, but unfortunatelly modern saunas are very different from the old saunas that were used for religious purposes.

The first purpose of the sauna is to honor the powers of the elements, fire, water and stone (earth) and how the spirits of such elements together make "magic", creating steam, thought to be the very breath of the earth and the ancestors. Without these elements, the spirits will not come to you.

For religious purposes, the sauna must have a good source of heat from wood with real flame (nowadays modern saunas have the source of heat through an electric sistem). Also, there is the need of adding stones, most modern saunas have them, as long as there is wood and real flame, it is fine. Now, something very important that isn't taken to account by the people who build modern saunas. Ventilation. Many modern saunas make people sick because the oxygen levels fall too low. Any type of opening will do, the fire needs oxygen to "breath". The best way is having an adjustable vent near the floor, to vent the cooling sinking air, and another higher up to vent the excess heat that follows later.
Also, like I've written, having stones, to throw water on them. Don't pick up river stones, usualy blow apart during temperature changes. You will also need water of course. Our ancestors used to collect the rainwater for these purpose, coming from the sky, it was a direct blessing from the deities. The type of wood used to come from the birch trees, I believe that I have already written about the birch tree in another post, those were consider to be very magical in many cultures, especially the ones ruled by a druidic order.

Do whatever you want in the sauna, but know that the real purpose of it, wasn't to party, so if you really want to do any type of spiritual work, you must behave of course. Being in a sauna, one must be quiet, meditative, peaceful, solemn. This is an opportunity to be in touch with the spirits of the elements, a rebirth ritual, so our ancestors used to go into the sauna, completly naked, the way they came into the world, deprived of any clothing.

Of course people may feel shy for being naked in a community sauna, that is understandable, but modern community saunas don't have the ancestral spiritual purposes. Community saunas used to be mixed gender, however, some rituals during the year only for men or for women, were held inside the sauna (at least part of the rituals) so in that case, the sauna was occupied by only one gender.

The first saunas were made out of stone, but during the later 5th - 6th centuries, these were being built our of timber. The hearth was considered to be the altar of the sauna (the sauna being the temple/house of the ancestors).
The door to a traditional sauna used to be shorter than a an average door, people had to stoop to get into it, showing reverence for the ancestors.

The very first saunas were smoke saunas, the Finns refer to them as savusauna. The fire was lit under stones, and the smoke went out through a hole in the wall or ceiling. The smoke heated the entire room and then the hole was shut and the window opened to let in fresh air come in. There are different claims on the health risks of these smoke saunas, or savusauna. Some say that the smoke is bad for your lungs, others that the smoke creates a bacteria-free and oxygen-rich environment. Don't try these in any circumstances if you are new at this or alone, these might be better in community and with someone outside the door.

The traditional ways of making fire for the sauna, would take long (compared to modern ways of course, it wasn't that long) but it would take longer to get the sauna ready for the spiritual purpose, so people used to sit outside and play the shamanic instruments to call upon a spirit to enter the sauna. In some cases, people would also wait for a family member to die in or near the sauna, so they would be able to call upon them during the sauna rituals.

Our ancestors would call upon guardian spirits to protect them. There was/is one very popular in Finland, named Saunatonttu, a little gnome or sort of faery. It was customary to warm up the sauna just for the gnome every now and then, or to leave some food outside for him. It is said that he warned the people if a fire was threatening the sauna, or punished people who behaved improperly while inside it. The Saunatonttu doesn't seem to be an Alfar (Elf) but more like a being that belongs to the "little people" race. In Russia there was the Bannik or banyanka, also a spirit that protected people from evil spirits. Our ancestors would take refuge in the bath houses and saunas to pray to these spirits for protection.

The purpose of the sauna was to honor the ancestors, to call upon the spirits for protection and to be connected with them and the elements of nature, creating the very breath of the earth, ancestors and gods. Through this "breath" one would cleanse the body and soul.

Sauna: House of the Ancestors

It is the opinion of those of us who consider the sauna to be a spiritual tool of the Northern Tradition that if you are going to do it at all, you should do it right. Some modern "saunas" have electric heat, or infrared heat, or no steam at all, or not enough ventilation. Except for that last item, which can make people ill from oxygen deprivation, the rest aren't exactly a crime. If you want to use such a "sauna", fine. Go ahead. You can even use it as a purification ordeal, which is part of what the sauna is ... but don't think that you'll get deep religious ritual out of it. Tapping into the original spirit of the sauna/stofa ritual is honoring the powers of fire and water and stone, and the steam that is the Breath of the Ancestors. Without those, the wights will not come.
A proper sauna/stofa ritual should have the following in attendance:
1) A source of wood heat, with real flame. Usually this is a woodstove, although a stone hearth or oven will do just as well.
2) Ventilation. Many modern airtight saunas make people sick because the oxygen level falls too low. Even an open window to the cold is better than nothing - just crank the fire up. The ideal is an adjustable vent near the floor, to vent the cooling, sinking air, and another higher up to vent the excess heat later on.
2*) Stones to throw water on. They can be collected ceremonially and charged with intent, if you like. Do not use river stones, which have a tendency to blow apart during temperature changes.

3) Water to throw on the stones, preferably rainwater.
4) A birch whisk. To make this, collect birch "twigs" - meaning branches less than two feet long - and tie them together. It is best made and used fresh, but of course you may not be able to get fresh leafy birch twigs for a good portion of the year. Think ahead and make a bunch of them, and let them dry. They should be spring or summer branches; fall branches tend to defoliate easier. Hang them to dry and then store them flat in paper bags. You will use each one up every time you do a sauna ritual, so be prepared. (If you have a chest freezer, you can freeze them flat in bags and then thaw them later.)
To use a fresh whisk, simply rinse it off before going into the sauna. During the second round - the Community round - dip it in warm water and turn it gently over the steam. For a dry whisk, rinse off the dry branches and then put them into a basin of warm - not hot - water. This is usually done on top of the sauna stove. As soon as it is rehydrated, it is ready for use. The birch whisks bring a beautiful scent to the hot air. It has a long history as well; among the ancient Slavic people, a certain number of birch whisks were actually paid as tributes by weaker, conquered tribes.
5) Knowledge of the proper sauna etiquette. A sauna is not for partying, rowdiness, or fondling each other. It is a solemn occasion, and a quiet, meditative ambience should be promoted. Being naked is mandatory; one should go in as one came out of the womb. The sauna is a rebirth experience in its own way. In our modern society, some people may feel shy about being naked, but this is fairly critical. Anyone who would be so rude as to comment on someone's body, or give someone an unwanted touch, shouldn't be allowed to be present during such a ritual anyway.
Community saunas are traditionally mixed-gender and mixed-age, although there were occasional saunas specially for men or women (for example, part of a puberty rite might be held in the sauna). One saying held that of the three sauna rounds, one was for men, one for women, and one for the faeries. (One would assume that this refers to firing up the empty sauna for the Saunatonttu; see below.) However, the ancestors of men and women are the same, and we strongly encourage mixed-gender saunas, with everyone well versed in the proper behavior. If nothing else, it obviates the problem of where to put the people who are neither male nor female, some of whom may be the community shamans.
The first step is to build and consecrate your sauna. While the original ones were made of stone, by the 5^th century they were being built of timber. However you make yours, be sure that it has good ventilation. Situate the hearth carefully - remember that it is the altar of the room. You will likely be using some wood, if only for the benches. Traditionally, all lumber scraps were saved and burned in the ceremonial first firing. The door to a traditional sauna should be shorter than a "normal" door; one should have to stoop to get into it, which shows reverence for the ancestors. In Russia, it was traditional to leave the banya backwards, bowing to the spirits. Another of their traditions was burying a sacrificed black cock under the doorstep, a custom which the modern builder may use or not, as they prefer.
The first saunas were smoke saunas, referred to by the Finns as savusauna. The fire was lit under stones, and the smoke went out through a hole in the wall or ceiling. When the smoke had heated the entire room, the hole was shut and the window opened to let in fresh air. There are varying claims on the health risks of savusauna; some say that the smoke is bad for your lungs, others that the smoke creates a bacteria-free and oxygen-rich environment, assuming that you leave the place alone long enough for all the deadly carbon monoxide to leave it.
However you feel about it, the first ceremonial firing of your sauna should be as close to a traditional savusauna as possible. Afterwards, you can do it the "normal" way. To do this, remove the stovepipe from your stove (or stop up your chimney, if there's no pipe). Place containers of water out for heating. (It's also good to have it around in case of fire.) Start your fire using an older method, the sort that is appropriate for sacred fires - flint and steel at the least, or a fire-bow or fire-drill if you have mastered that art. Add pieces of birch, then harder woods as the fire gets going. It is traditional at this point to burn the scrap lumber from the building project.
Make sure that you have your vents open. It will take three to six hours to properly smoke up the sauna, so start it early in the day. Appropriate activities during this time might be to sit outside and drum and sing. What you're trying to do is to call a guardian spirit into the sauna. For some folk, the guardian spirit was an ancestor - in which case they didn't call one in when building the sauna, but merely waited until a family member died in there. Since we are unlikely to want to wait that long, start calling for a guardian spirit during the smoke-out.
Another sort of guardian spirit, popular in Finland, is the Saunatonttu, a little gnome or wizened faery. It was customary to warm up the sauna just for the gnome every now and then, or to leave some food outside for him. It is said that he warned the people if a fire was threatening the sauna, or punished people who behaved improperly while inside it. The Saunatonttu doesn't seem to be an Alfar-type so much as one of the "little people", the earthly nature sprites who live astrally in this world. If you work with them, calling a Saunatonttu might be a good idea. If not, try calling an ancestor to watch over the place, or just ask the land-wight to send the right spirit over. The song that you sing doesn't have to be brilliant, just sincere.
In Russia, the guardian spirit of the banya was the Bannik, a spindly, hairy creature described here by Aleksa: "In ancient Russian culture, the (usually male) spirits of the banyaprovided safety in bad times or against evil spirits, so if you were being chased through a field or a forest by evil beings or bad men, you may take refuge in a bathhouse and pray to the banyanka or the Bannik to protect you. The Bannik controlled your experience of the banya - the heat and steam levels - and it was heated and cleaned once a week to placate him. In Christian times the offering became the sign of the cross (although, ironically, icons were not allowed to be hung in abanya due to their residual pagan associations), but vestiges remained of the pagan practice of feeding the Bannik in offerings of vodka. In order to see the bannik, you had to go alone at night, and you had to sit with part of yourself in the banya and part out - in other words, you had to be in-between. (This was why people didn't bathe alone at night, unless they wanted to meet the Bannik.) If the banya made a purring sound, the Bannik was at home." He was sometimes known to appear to late-night wanderers as a village elder or dead ancestor, and it was important to leave the fourth steam round for him, to propitiate him with food and vodka, and to refrain from bringing anything from the house into the banya and vice versa, as everything in the banyabelonged to him (whereas the rest belonged to the domovoi). If properly treated, he would protect his guests; if maltreated he would become hostile and cause failures of fertility (crop, animal, and human), again showing the connections to the banya as a temple to Mokosh the Earth Mother.

But back to your ceremonial first smoke sauna. When the room is very hot and there is only a small blue flame left in the fire, shut the vents for a while - perhaps 20 minutes. Then open them all up and let the air in for at least an hour, to clear out all carbon monoxide. Pour water on your rocks, which will have been heating on the stove; it helps clear the air. When it's safe to be in there for more than a minute, go in with buckets of water and old rags and wipe everything down - the smoke will have blackened things. Sweep the floor, putting your intent into purifying the space. Then reconnect the stovepipe (or unstop the chimney), relight the fire, and have a regular sauna in the mellow heat from the savusauna. You have now honored the ancestors by doing your first firing in the way that they would have done.

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The Sauna - Fire and Water

"Saunassa ollaan kuin kirkossa."

-Finnish saying: You should be in the sauna as in a church.


For the northern European peoples, a hot room full of steam was the best way to get clean. When half their year is bitterly cold, enough that it would be impractical to be wet and naked for very long, being in a tub of water in a drafty longhouse isn't a good idea. Unless living next to hot springs - which were sacred places and much revered - the best choice is to build a separate small building (or a small space within a large one) where you can heat things up and encourage your body to sweat out impurities. If you lay a supply of rocks into it, heat them,and throw water on them, you get the cleansing steam that the Finns refer to as löyly.
While the sauna is mostly associated with the Finnish people these days, we know from archaeological digs that ancient cultures all over the arctic and subarctic regions of Eurasia used them to one extent or another. In northern Europe, the oldest ones were small domed stone buildings with a hole in the top, rather like a permanent stone version of the Native American sweat lodge. Somewhat later ones were round or squarish stone buildings; occasionally a Norse longhouse would have a separate small room that seems to have been a bathhouse. In the Eyrbyggja Saga, a Norse bathhouse is described that is a room dug into the ground, or perhaps the side of a hill. A window over a stone oven, just at ground level, provided both ventilation and a place to pour water over the stones.

The word sauna is Saami, the language of the original inhabitants of Finland. We don't necessarily know what the various Scandinavian and Slavic cultures called a bathhouse, because the modern words are more recent in their etymology, such as the German Aufguss and the Russian banya (which was originally derived from an Italian word for bath). However, some linguists have pointed out that the Old Germanic word stofa, which is where we get our modern word "stove", originally meant a heated bathhouse and may have been the equivalent word for the Finnish sauna. It later evolved into the German Stube, which became Badstube or bathhouse.

During the Middle Ages, public bathhouses went from being family and tribal retreats to being busy centers of commerce and prostitution. The Catholic Church finally cracked down and banned them, and so the sauna and its various forms were lost to most places west of Finland for a long time, until those countries rediscovered the health benefits of the sauna in later centuries. This interruption via first civilization and second Christianity means that we have very little in the way of remaining lore about the religious rituals of the stofa. We can conjecture from the scraps left behind, especially those remaining in Finnish and Russian culture, or we can ask the wights and work them out ourselves, which is what some people have done.

As far as we can tell, one of the primary religious functions of the sauna in Finland - and likely in the rest of northern Europe as well - was as a holy place of transition. Women were brought into the sauna to give birth, and the dying often lived out their last days there. Once dead, their bodies were washed and wrapped in the sauna before removing them to a grave. It was also used for secluding one's self for such things as casting charms and spells, and healing rituals of all sorts were performed there on various sufferers. Indeed, the ill were often brought into the sauna for the duration of their illness. In Russian folklore, sorcerers both good and bad were said to practice there, doing things unacceptable to normal society in that in-between space. Similarly, stillborn children were buried under the threshold to protect them and guard their spirits - like baptizing them without a baptism.

Ancestor worship was also a function of the sauna; it was thought that the Dead would return to places that they had enjoyed, including the bathhouse, and that the löyly, or sacred steam, held their souls. It is the Breath of the Ancestors, a word which originally meant "spirit" or "life". (One cognate is the Ostyak word lil, which means "soul".) The sauna is, in many ways, an ancestor altar that is also useful. Its usefulness stretched to the mundane as well; it was sometimes used for such practical purposes as curing meat or drying out malt, hemp and flax. It was a doorway between worlds; the fact that fire and water held an equal balance in sauna sanctity drives home the image of liminal space.

The banya seems to have endured in Russia as well, although it is not as famous in the West as the Finnish sauna. Herodotus wrote about the people of the Black Sea region making a felt-covered hut and throwing water onto red-hot stones inside, creating a vapor hotter than any Hellenic bath. (He also relates that hempseed was thrown onto the stones for purposes of visions and prophecy.) According to his accounts, this Slavic sweat lodge was used for ritual cleansing before marriage and after burying the dead. 2^nd-century excavations of Slavic settlements in Poland show earth-sheltered houses with fireplaces in the middle, but no separate bathhouses. The concept of building an actual permanent structure seems to have been unknown in the southern Slavic areas until the people of Novgorod moved south, as mentioned in the Lay of Igor's Campaign. Novgorod, a northern Slavic city, had been heavily settled by the Rus tribes, and was the mercantile capital of trade between them and the Norse. (There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that the Rus people, or at least their leaders/upper classes, were Varangian/Norse-descended. There is also some evidence to support opposing conclusions; the debate still rages. However, regardless of how Norse-descended they were, they were certainly Norse-influenced.) With archaeological evidence showing that the early Russian banya was basically identical to the Finnish sauna and the Norse equivalent, it is likely that it is an ancient import from the Rus settlers.

As the Catholic Church never held much sway in Russia (and the Orthodox Church never fixed on sweat-bathing as a moral problem), the tradition of the banya continued unabated, complete with its folk beliefs. The Russian Primary Chronicle describes, in 1113, the monk Andreas' observations of the banya practice in Novgorod wherein he described the pagans "drenching themselves": 

As today, this does show the sauna as an ordeal of heat. In many ways, sauna-work is poised on the edge between the Ascetic's Path and the Ordeal Path, depending on how hot it is, and for what purpose it is used - purification, community bonding, creation of sacred space, or strength ordeal? When performed as a group rite, it partakes of the Path of Ritual as well. A multipurpose tool, the House of the Ancestors can be all of these. A community sweat is very different from using the sauna as a safe and sacred place to give birth, and even more different from using it as a solo purification and sacred-space creator for a spirit-worker.

If well tended and kept holy, it could also be a source of power to call upon. The Russian Primary Chronicle also tells of Princess Olga, the pagan widow of Prince Igor of Kiev, who punished the Derevlians for the murder of her husband in 945 A.D. Their leader had designs on her, considering her to be booty earned by the murder, and sent messengers to discuss their future marriage. Olga invited the Derevlian messengers to use her banya, and while they were inside, her men barred the doors and burned the banya to the ground with the Derevlians in it.

Another way in which the Russian banya was a peripheral space was the tradition that sorcerers had to be brought there to die. (Keep in mind that many of the medieval descriptions of a "sorcerer" sound more like a shaman - they had spirit allies, they had to complete their sorcerous transition or die, and so forth.) It was said that a wizard's spirit would be unquiet if they could not pass on their knowledge, so the banya offered a protected space for them to teach their heirs without the "magic" leaking and accidentally conveying their gifts to the unsuspecting, and also a place where their spirit would be sent firmly on its way by the power of the banya in case there were no heirs. This association with wizards (and with pagan beliefs; the banya is said to be the vtoroi mat, or second mother, referring to its symbolism as a small temple to Mokosh the Earth Mother) caused later Russian Christians to say that the bathhouse was full of devils and unquiet ghosts. In general, Russian sorcerers (referred to as koldun) were said to go off to thebanya when all the good Christians were going off to church. Besides the idea of the bathhouse being a private place to work magic, this comment reinforces the idea of the banya as a holdover from the pagan temple. Because of this, anyone who snuck off to the banya alone at odd times might be accused of sorcery, especially if they visited after midnight, which was when the spirits (evil or otherwise) took over the building.

The banya was also a place for prophecy and divination, as well as healing and rites of passage. According to folk belief, babies were born there because birthing women and newborns were terribly vulnerable to evil forces, and the guardian spirit of the banya was so strong that it kept all other spirits at bay. Bringing a child into the bathhouse would, for some reason, earn the favor of the domovoi and domikha, the male and female spirits of the house itself. One custom supposedly had the midwife stripping naked and carrying the newborn child around the banya, chanting an invocation to the Morning Star to keep the child from crying. As a house of both the living and the Dead, this was the place for seeing the Dead off on their way. Forty days after a funeral - during which time water, vodka and towels were left in the banya for the dead soul - the fire was lit and a feast prepared for them. Afterwards, the family walked out of the bathhouse and crossed the road, ceremonially sending the dead soul away.
Specific ritual dates associated with the banya were Mokosh's holiday - said to be in the late fall after the harvest when winter was beginning; one could possibly assume around the western-European festival of Samhain - and Yule, when pre-marriage prophecies were sought and made. (At any time of the year, brides were sent to the bathhouse to have a pre-wedding purification steam bath the night before the nuptials, and at least one source suggests that the village sorcerer or shaman was in charge of such ceremonies.) From all its associations, it is clear that the bathhouse in these cultures took the place of the sacred temple or grove once Christianity took over. Having a small building on one's property that could also be used for quite practical tasks provided the average peasant with a place to store all the reverence, memories, and suspiciously magical practices left over from a pagan past.

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