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Velleda was a priestess, prophet and seer of the Bructeri, a Germanic tribe. She was whom prophesied and presided over a tribal European insurrection against the Roman rule between the years of 69-70 CE. Velleda seems to be a Germanic Title and not her own name. She and Aurinia are mentioned in Tacitus' book "Germania" and that was where I first found a bit of history about these women and did a little research after.
"They think that in them* there is something sacred and prophetic, as such, they do not despise their counsels, nor turn away their answers. In the time of divine Vespasian we saw Velleda praised as a deity by many for a long time; and previously they also worshiped Aurinia and many others, but not by flattery, nor by considering them goddesses. "[Tacitus, Germania, 8]
*Germanic Women in general.
Germanic women were revered and protected as much as possible by the Germanic Peoples. They were seen as being magical in nature, linked to the deities. Even when men were wounded, the first thing they did was to show their wounds to the women of their tribe or own family, so they could heal them and take care of them.
In the case of Velleda and Aurinia, if we take a close look, these are Völvur, the practitioners of the Norse/Germanic spiritual/shamanic arts, such as Seidr.
Such as the Druids in the Celtic culture, these Germanic Women had an important role in the Norse/Germanic Societies, especially the tribes from central Europe. Even in war affairs, their opinions always counted. There are archaeological evidence that germanic women helped in the defence of the borders in the Rhine, the natural border between the Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire.
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Note: The artwork to illustrate this post is a drawing entitled "Velleda und Aurinia" made by me. If you have any questions for me or if you want to see my artistic works, check out my Facebook page and make a Like if you can by following this link --> http://www.facebook.com/ArithHarger
The other day I wrote about Shamanism in the Northern Traditional Paganism and I left you all with the glimpse of the idea that women were the only ones to work with magic, rune Reading, shamanism etc. in the old Norse comunities, and in this post I will go further on that and explain why women were so importante in these fields of expertise.
We know of many Norse deities that are connected with the runes and magic, with shaman practices who are both male and female, the Aesir, Vanir, Jotnar, Alfar, Duergar and such others from the Norse cosmology work with such magics and are linked to them, but the powers of Seiðr are in fact an exclusive spiritual path that belong to the Vanir tribe of gods, and from them, all others gained the knowledge to work with such powers, as such, the Vanir gods aren't just connected with Nature, Agriculture, Fertility and Love, they are also connected to Magic, to shamanism, to Seiðr. Afther many gained this knowledge, including Odin, taught by the Vanir deities, it was also passed down to us mortals, and such works were only practiced by women in the Norse communities, this doesn't mean that men couldn't do it, but to the eyes of the Norse society of that time, it wasn't seen as the right thing for a man to do, nor was it dignify. So women were the workers and practitioners of Seiðr, and were so called Vǫlva ( or Völva in Icelandic ), plural vǫlur in Old Norse and völvur in Icelandic.
Freyja is the divine archetype of the völva, a professional practitioner of the Norse/Germanic magical tradition known as Seiðr. This was a form of magic concerned with discerning and altering the course of destiny by re-weaving one part of the destiny’s web. To do such things, one would enter in trance, such as a shaman does, and go throughout the Nine worlds in the spirit form and accomplishing her intended tasks.
Freyja as a female deity closely linked to sexuality, fertility, love, magic, household, sensuality, is the perfect patroness of women in the old Norse community and the one closely connected with women that did spiritual work.
During these ages, the völva wandered from town to town and farm to farm prophesying and performing other acts of magic in exchange for room, board, and often other forms of compensation as well. it was their job and all jobs must receive any kind of payment according to the importance of the job. The most detailed account that we might have access to of such a woman and her doings comes from The Saga of Erik the Red, but numerous sagas as well as some of the mythic poems (most notably the Völuspá, “The Insight of the Völva“) contain sparse accounts of seidr-workers and their practices.
As we know well that any other northern Eurasian shamans was set apart from their communities, the völva was no exception to the rule, these women were set apart from their society as well in both a positive and a negative sense, a Völva was simultaneously exalted, sought-after, feared, and, in some instances, reviled. However, the Völva is very reminiscent of the veleda, a seeress or prophetess who held a more clearly-defined and highly respected position amongst the Norse/Germanic tribes for many centuries both after and before the common era. The women practitioners of these arts held a more or less dignified role among their people.
Speaking of a dignified role among society, such wasn't usually the case for male practitioners of these arts, of Seiðr. According to traditional Norse/Germanic gender constructs, it was extremely shameful and dishonorable for a man to adopt a female social or sexual role. A man who practiced Seiðr could expect to be labeled ergi (Old Norse for “unmanly”) one of the gravest insults that could be hurled at a Norse/Germanic man in those times. Still, this didn’t stop numerous men from engaging in seidr, sometimes even as a profession. the female position in society and their professions was very important in the role politics and economy, while men took care of the defence of a community, or other warfare acts, hard work in the fields in agriculture, fishing and so on, women were left behind most of the time to do all the hard work in the farms as well, while men were gone at war or died, and also taking care of the house, the great halls, the children, and anything that might have been done in a community of those times. Think of it as time of the Great World War II, most men were dead or crippled, and society was forced to take the women in and scattered them in many fields of expertise, in order to save the economy and keep the countries running, but in Norse/Germanic societies, this was completly normal and accepted with no problem.
Note: The artwork to illustrate this post is a drawing made by me of two women practitioners of Seiðr. If you have any questions for me or if you want to see my artistic works, check out my Facebook page and make a Like if you can by following this link --> http://www.facebook.com/ArithHarger
If you have read my blog, you already know more or less what shamanism is, but for those who found this blog and came straight to this post, lets just make a brief explanation.
Shamanism is the oldest profession since imemorial times, working with the spirits and entering the spiritual world through an altered state of consciousness, with the purpose of learning from the spirits, or deities or even the ancestors, to aid in the various needs of our daily mortal lifes.
There are records of shamanism being practice all over the world for as long as 40.000 years possibly more. When it comes to Norse Shamanism, or the kind of shamanism practiced in Northern Europe by hte Norse/Germanic Peoples, the bases are similar, however in ancient times, this was women's work in ancient Scandinavia, not to say that men also did not practice, but those were very few at the time, and only in very secret cults, dedicated to a specific god and usualy with warlike purposes and to the welfare of the group or really very individual, each member trying to achieve something for his own. So in the Norse/Germanic culture, shamanism or Seiðr was practice by women for the welfare of the entire community, for healing, divination, talking with the gods and the land spirits for aid, knowing which place was better for hunting, dwell, etc etc.
One of the most famous gods of the Norse pantheon, is Odin, and he is the archetype of a shamanic figure, the tales of how he stood hanged on the world tree Yggdrasil, wounded by his own spear, without food or drink, without rest or healing for Nine days and nights to achieve greater wisdom and the hidden knowledge of the Runes, shows us the primary ways of shamanism and how to enter in trance to travel to the other side in search for something or to work with the spirits. The ways of Odin and how he manages to make spiritual journeys is well written in many stories including the "The Ynglinga Saga" which records would travel to distant lands on his own errands or those of others, while he appeared to be asleep or dead. Also there are many tales of him travelling to the underword in search for answers, which is something very typical in shamanism, travelling to the underworld to communicate with the underworld deities or with the spirits of the dead who have a greater knowledge about spiritual journeys and the many places of the otherworld which is their own world.
Like most shamans around the world, Odin also has familiar spirits, which are beings that aid the shaman in the journeys to the otherworld, teaching the shaman, showing him the ways, giving advice, spirits that are connected with the shaman, Odin too has these, for example, his two ravens.
Shamans undergo a ritual of death and rebirth, to gain their powers, it can be physical or while in trance, dying and coming back with a new body fit to the future tasks of the shaman while working on the world of th spirits. Odin too did such a sacrífice, an ordeal to aquiere such powers, the one of have written about before in this same post, wounded and hanging from Yggdrasil.
It is said that Odin is a practitioner of Seiðr, which he learned from the goddess Freyja, such goddess from a different tribe of gods, the Vanir gods, which are the kind of deities much more connected with shamanism and spiritual work, the kind of deities that teach the other tribes of Gods, and here we can see the sama connections that women had in the Norse/Germanic communities, those were the ones that held such powers.
The Norse Shamanic magics, Seiðr, was practiced by the women called Völva or seiðkona, these women wandered from town to town or from farm to farm to prophesying and performing other acts of magic in exchange for room, board, and often other forms of compensation as well. Guided by the spirits, they went to where was needed, to where they were called. Such as all the other shamans in other countries and different cultures, the Völva were also set apart from the society, and they lived out in the open, in the wild places, or near the villages but far from its domains, this is a caracteristic from shamans that have been found and documented by archaeologits that dates from 27.000 ago as it was found in the Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov sites in czech republic. The shaman always stood outsider the community/society/tribe.
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The lovers of Archaeology and of Northern European History, surely have heard about the Oseberg Longboat found by the norwegian archaeologists at Oseberg south of Oslo. The great archaeological treasure is a real master piece of northern european design, culture and art, beautifully carved with images of animals, skillful knotworks, entirely made of oak. Inside the Longboat, there were two dead bodies of women, there were also dogs, horses and an ox. A four wheeled cart was at the far end of the Longboat, the first viking cart to be discovered and there were also four sledges there, also beautifully carved. But what makes this finding so spectacular is the possible identity of the two women. Both of these women were considered elderly for the time, on was 70 and the other 50 more or less between these ages, analysis showed that their diet was very rich, meaning that these women were of an higher status in their viking society. At first archaeologists thought that these two women, buried in a burial mound far from the sea, they could be the wives of local farmers, but a treasure like this one, these couldn't be mere farmer's wives, with the help of the knowledge about traditional burial rituals and spiritual paths of the northern european peoples and with the finding of a small leather purse, these women would reveal their secrets. The small leather purse contained cannabis seeds, which induce trance when burnt, and there was also a rattle, a musical instrument also very much used for the same purpose. There were also tapestries with the women, which may have illustrated the shamanic rituals held in these times.
In the Norse society, shamanism or seiðr was the work of women, as i have written in an other post about the northern magic workers The practitioners of seiðr, known as seiðkona or völva, entered in trance using drugs, chanting or rythmic sounds with musical instruments. In the case of the Oseberg women, the cannabis seeds and the rattle may have helped them entering in trance.
The images carved or painted in stone in prehistoric times and even in more recent historical times and in folklore show us that in many cases the boat was the vessel which helped shamans reaching the other world in their shamanic journeys and helped the dead to reach the afterlife, we see this many times in Norse burial rituals when the dead were placed in a long boat with many gifts and then it was burnt, or burial mounds in a shape of a boat made out of stones. To the far north, there are thousands of images of shamans beating their drums while sailing in ships into the otherworld.
In the case of the Oseberg women, they were clearly practitioners of seiðr - Norse Shamanism - and the Longboat was obviously designed to stay on land and not with the purpose of sailing, at least not sailing in this world.
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Since childhood we have heard about those who work with magic, in stories, fairy tales, books, movies etc. about wizards, sorcerers, prophets and so on. In this post i will give you some examples and names that you might hear or read when searching for lore or academic material concerning the northern european traditional ways of magic, rune-reading, witchcraft and such, in this way you will get use to those names and you won't be lost when you encounter them.
Europeans have always been people really close to the magic arts, this may sound like something taken out from a fantasy book, but when i mean magic, i am referring to those who practiced shamanism or any other form of tribal spirituality and divination, or those who worked with herbs and drugs in terms of healing the body or to induce trance. The first word one might hear or read a lot when searching for the Norse lore and people who practiced these things is the word "Völva" the name given to a prophetess, there are many women with such title in the lore, in the sagas especially in the Völuspá. Another word ( not so much heard ) is "Thul" the title used to for "wiseman" a sage or a bard, a person with the gift of singing and with the gift of words, a very eloquent person, who uses those gifts to tell or sing stories of truth, with morality and warnings, with wisdom and also a person who describes the lineage of kings and heroes, having great knowledge in the matter. The word Seiðr or Seidhr is a very common word to hear about, used to describe those who practice the old ways, the traditional shamanism of the northern peoples of Europe and in this field, women were the ones to prectice it, they were called seiðkona or spákona, there were also men who practiced it, but since seiðr was always closely associated with women and the female gender, men who were caught practicing these things could be outraged, insulted, reviled and even sentenced to death, but these men where called seiðmadhr or spámadhrmadhr. There is also a title for the wizard, those famous men filled with wisdom and knowledge in the magic arts, the title is "vitki". For those who read runes and are the rune masters, the title is "rúna-meistari" and also "galdra-meistari" or "galdra-kona" for a man or woman who uses spells. There are also those who deal with the black arts which are called "fjölkunning" and those who work with mysterious and sinister spirits and wights who are called "trollkjerring" however, these titles are not often used nor often seen in the lore.
The general term for magic in the old norse or the term refering to norse magic is "gand" this is the closest we can get, a term associated with magic workers, magical beings linked to the person who practices magic and also objects used for magic. The word for spell or song is "Galdr" this word may also be refering to items, objects to practice magic, since people had to use them to chant a spell, and this term is also used in such mater because spells were sung in a high voice, very much verbal.
So these are a few words you might encounter when studying the Norse lore and the old ways of spirituality.
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