In our modern scientific worldview, the world we live in, this planet Earth, is a (slightly flattened) sphere, spinning on its axis and orbiting around our local star, the Sun. Accordingly, the two most widespread mythic images of the world have been as a circle, like the Buddhist Wheel of Samsara, and as an axial world tree, like the Nordic World Tree Yggdrasill. This axial world tree plays a central role in the world creation, world maintenance, and world destruction myths of the Nordic-Germanic people.
In the poetic Eddas, the shaman-god Odin hangs himself from this tree, fasting, for nine days and nights, learning powerful songs with which to invoke the spirits, read the runes, and travel between the worlds. The name Yggdrasill means “Odin’s Horse”—and is thus a coded reference to the function of the axial tree for shamanic travel to the upper and lower worlds. It was said that Odin hung himself on the world tree in ritual self-sacrifice in order to obtain secret knowledge and the capability of travel to the different worlds.
Like the Wheel of Existence, the World Tree is an image with multiple layers of meaning. On the most basic geocosmic level, it symbolizes the rotational axis of planet Earth, with its concentric layers—geosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, ethnosphere, technosphere, cybersphere, and noosphere. Human beings, though situated on the surface of this rotating spheroid planet, have always experienced themselves subjectively as living in a horizontal circular plane, defined by the four cardinal directions. From this geographic perspective, each of us human beings lives and walks on the surface of planet Earth oriented around a perpendicular axis that represents the central fulcrum of our experienced world, our world tree. There are layers of our experienced world “above,” in and above the atmosphere that surrounds us, and “below,” in the subterranean realms of soil and caves.
From yet another level of meaning, the words “above” and “below” refer not to directions in space, but to differences in vibrational frequency or density. The higher-frequency dimensions are less dense, invisible to normal perception, but are recognizable in meditative, yogic, and shamanic states of consciousness with extended and refined perception. In such states we can become aware of multiple species and orders of beings, often called “spirits,” inhabiting the worlds “below” and “above.”
As the work of anthropologist Michael Harner and others has shown, there is a considerable degree of cross-cultural consistency in the descriptions and depictions of the non-ordinary reality dimensions accessed by shamanic healers and explorers. A three-world (or five-world) model of upper, middle, and lower worlds appears to be universal—with the middle world being the world we normally inhabit in our daily lives and activities. The worlds above and below are accessible to shamanic healers and alchemical explorers in special states of consciousness facilitated by rhythmic drumming, visionary plants and fungi, or meditative/yogic practices.
The material sciences of the modern world have developed their worldview with powerful and sophisticated technologies of description, analysis, and measurement applied with an attitude of detached objective observation, ignoring any perceptions or intuitions of spirits or nonmaterial beings. The shamanic, artistic, mystical, and spiritually intuitive approaches to the world have recognized the same phenomena as science, but also perceived, named, and identified the subtle, psychic, ethereal, and spiritual characteristics and beings inhabiting the many worlds, and practiced communicating with them. As William Blake wrote, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with gods or geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous perceptions could perceive.
Just as science recognizes forms and organisms at microscopic levels that can only be perceived with special instruments, so poets, mystics, shamans, and visionaries say there are life-forms and beings in the upper, middle, and lower realms that are only perceptible in non-ordinary states or with extended perception.
The two basic variations of shamanic, visionary journeys and experiences involve the upper world or the lower world, and each of these may have several sublevels or domains. As I discussed in my book on metaphors of transformation, The Unfolding Self, the cosmic tree is one of a number of symbols of ascent, from the point of view of its role in shamanic upper world journeys. The shaman who is moving upward in space, whether climbing a mountain, a tree with many branches, a tower, a ladder, or flying is, by analogy and correspondence, moving “upward” in consciousness, to higher states of being, with a wider and more comprehensive perspective, such as one might obtain when flying or climbing.
Conversely, the shamanic explorer who journeys downward, going into a tunnel or cave or the root system of a tree, is, by analogy and correspondence, traveling into the microcosmos of his own multidimensional beingness, including the physical body, synchronously with journeying into subterranean worlds, in order to obtain insight and healing teachings from the spirits that have access to those domains.
In the diagram on the following page, I present an image of an integrated World Tree model that I have used in shamanic divination journeys, both with and without entheogenic amplification, over the past twenty years. In part, this World Tree model is based on the Norse-Germanic world tree Yggdrasill, which I wrote about in my book The Well of Remembrance. This world tree has nine worlds arrayed around it—the middle world, called Midgard, and two upper and two lower worlds on the central axis. Four additional worlds are situated in the four directions on the central plane.
Odin, the shamanic knowledge-seeking god, travels on the pathways connecting the different worlds of consciousness and existence, as is related in the mythic stories of the Eddas. He does so in order to learn from the beings existing in these multiple worlds. Besides Odin, other gods and goddesses also explore these realms, as do their followers among the humans—the shamans, poets, singers, seeresses, sorcerers, soothsayers, and witches. They do so for purposes of exploration and healing, using ecstatic techniques of otherworld journeying, including spells and incantations, drumming and dancing, ordeals and sacrifices, hallucinogenic herbs and fungi, and perhaps other methods now lost to us.
Deep Space World
Milky Way Galaxy
Solar System Planetary World
Sun, Earth, Moon, Planets & Satellites
Atmosphere Sky World
Winds, Raptor Birds,Treetops, Clouds, Mountains
Middle Earth World
Humans, Animals, Songbirds, Plants, Rivers, Lakes, Families, Farms, Forests, Cultures, Towns
Sea River Lower Earth Stone Mountain
World World World
Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Roots, Minerals, Crystals, Aquatic Mammals Fungi, Microbes Metals, Fire
Deep Earth World
Deep Caves, Wells, norns, Mimir
Earth Center Fire World
In my book The Well of Remembrance, first published in 1994, I described journeys to the different realms and encounters with spirit beings related in Nordic mythology. At that time, I did not recognize that the Nordic seer-poets included, in their songs and verses, coded directions for engaging in such journeys. I considered them on the order of travelers’ tales from exotic lands. Only later did I come to understand that the stories contained guidance on how one could actually undergo these journeys and learn from the deities and other beings encountered there. In the next chapter I will relate how this mythical cartography may be used in divination journeys in today’s world.
Other shamanic cultures, besides the Nordic-Germanic, have also developed a psycho-cosmology in the form of a vertical treelike form, with different branches or segments symbolizing the different layers or realms of consciousness and life. Such cosmologies are not just descriptive travelogues but contain implicit guidance from the elders on how to access spiritual knowledge in these realms. In 1992, when I was teaching at the California Institute of Integral Studies, I had the good fortune to participate in a course in Algonquian Spirituality, co-taught by native rights attorney-advocate James Sakej Youngblood Henderson, JD, and linguist-anthropologist Dan Moonhawk Alford, PhD.1
Henderson and Alford shared an indigenous conception, common to several North American tribes, in which there are spiritual realms both “above” and “below” the horizontal plane of the everyday world. In the Algonquian terminology, the center or middle layer, between the upper and lower realms, is called Earth Lodge. This would be the realm called Midgard (“garden in the middle”) in the Nordic tradition; and that was also called Middle Earth in J. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. In our divination journeys we have called it Middle Earth World.
This is the so-called “ordinary” and yet also sacred world in which we live our daily lives—the world of human beings, families, farms, animals, plants, rivers, forests, lakes, cultures, villages, and towns. It is the starting and returning point of all our divination journeys, the place where we determine our intentions and where we integrate the findings from our excursions into the other dimensions of our cosmos.
In the middle plane of the axial World Tree, the old Nordic-Germanic storytellers and poets described four additional worlds in the four cardinal directions. Two of these—a hot world of fire in the South, and a cold realm of ice in the North—are lifeless worlds representing polar extremes, between which are what we call the “temperate zones,” which permit all forms of life to flourish. It is clear that this mythic geography described by shamanic poet-seers is specific to what we now know as the central European continent. In other parts of the world, for example North America and Northern Asia, as you journey southward you would come to the tropics—worlds of enormous diversity and abundant life-force—and further south yet, below the equator, another temperate zone.
In the European continent of the Eddas, the West was Vanaheim, the realm of the Vanir, aboriginal agricultural deities of fertility, wealth, peace, and pleasure. These are the blessed lands of fruitful fields and fresh waters, teeming with wildlife and luxuriant with green plant growth. Experientially, this is a realm of green life-force, sensuous perception, and peaceful pleasure, of laughter, magic, and creative play. Transposed to our times and other continents, this would be the realm of those human groups and movements wanting to preserve, reestablish, and reinhabit local farming communities, practicing permaculture and indigenous, organic, and biodynamic lifeways. Tuning in to the consciousness of plants and trees, fields and streams, is certainly something that can be and has been explicitly or implicitly integrated into farming practices, even when no explicit terminology of “spirits” is used, in deference to the prevailing materialist worldview.
To the East in the central plane of the Norse cosmology was Jötunheim, home of the giants. In the poems of the Edda, giants are the mythic personifications of the vast impersonal forces of nature—great rivers, mountain ranges, forests, and wild places—which can be dangerous to humans, but are not specifically antagonistic to them. We don’t (and we shouldn’t) take it personally if we are hit by lightning, or caught in a downpour of rain. The planetary giants live in a different world—which means they exist on different scales of time and space and have different agendas than humans, or gods, for that matter. In the Norse Eddas, humans do not ordinarily have a relationship with or communicate with the giants, unlike the sometimes very personal and even intimate relationships humans can have with nature spirits and deities in the other realms.
However, there do exist stories of some indigenous shamans and their practices being able to affect the weather, such as rain-making in areas of drought—which would indicate that there has been some kind of reciprocal communication exchange with the spirit energies of wind and water. I have had some personal experience along those lines: one time we were working in a medicine circle divination journey in the mountains in Northern New Mexico. During the preparations for the journey, a storm began to pick up and was gradually increasing in intensity.
As I was speaking the initial invocations of the spirits of the four directions, of time and place, and of the familial and allied spirits of all the participants, gusts of storm wind whirled and howled around the house, rattling the windows. I verbalized our growing awareness of the presence of this tempestuous spirit—saying out loud, “There you are wind spirits, we hear you and feel you, we give you our respectful attention.” We sat in silence and a few minutes later, the little whirlwind moved on. It was as if it just “wanted” to be acknowledged.
The giants of Nordic myth, like the titans and monsters of Greek mythology, may also represent mythologized species memories of primordial evolutionary forces and geocosmic planetary events—for example, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and meteor strikes, like that which extinguished the dinosaur monsters. In the myths, the giants function sometimes as allies of the gods, but at other times as adversaries. As if it were the task of the gods, who perhaps arrived in a later planetary cycle, to tame the giants and hence reduce their monstrous destructiveness.
These mythic giants, personifications of gigantic natural forces, are neither blind nor stupid. Mimir, the giant who guards the Well at the roots of the World Tree, is credited with knowledge of the origin of things and becomes one of Odin’s chief teachers and guides. One of the poems of the Edda records a question-and-answer dialogue between the shaman-god Odin and a wise and powerful giant about the origin and destruction of the world.
In our divination ceremonies, we have not spent much time or energy tuning in deliberately either to the worlds of the peaceful earth deities or to the worlds of the vast and powerful giants. However, one need only think of the psychological impact of wild places like the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwestern Desert, the Colorado River, the Adirondacks, the Everglades—places that have inspired not only millions of tourist visitors but also preservation and conservation movements—to recognize that the “natural giants” of ancient times are still very much alive and present in human lives and consciousness.
The first level of the upper worlds is the world I am calling Atmosphere Sky World—the world of winds, invisible air currents, clouds, high treetops, mountain peaks, high-flying birds, and of course humans in their flying machines and devices. In the Algonquian cosmology, this first layer of the upper worlds was called Sky Lodge. In terms of the Gaia theory of James Lovelock, the atmosphere is seen as an integral part of the biosphere, a spherical layer surrounding the Earth, produced and maintained by the inter-exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between plant and animal life.
This is also the upper world we visit in our flying dreams, mystical visions, and intentional out-of-body shamanic journeys. We may find ourselves viewing the familiar world from above and visiting beings and places known and unknown. We may encounter on such journeys the various light and flying spirits that have been portrayed in mythic and religious art and literature as devas (“shining ones”), angels (“messengers”), elves, dakinis, sylphs, and others. These beings of the so-called devic kingdom have a different relationship to the time-space dimension: they don’t incarnate in material bodies, but exist on the intermediate, subtle planes, where humans may interact with them in their dreams, intuitions, and creative visions.
The spirits associated with this Atmosphere Sky World usually appear transparent in form, radiant with light and luminous color, with energy fields that look like wings, predominantly female or androgynous in polarity—and emanating qualities of peace, beauty, harmony, and wisdom. They seem to play a role of intermediary between humans and the highest divine realms. They may appear in visions to heal and minister to the sick and dying, to protect and guide children, to prophesy and warn of disaster, to inspire musicians and other artists, to protect and foster the growth of plants and trees and the welfare of animals.
There are, however, according to both Eastern and Western esoteric and shamanic traditions, both light and dark spirits in the Atmosphere Sky World—as in all worlds, except the very highest divine realms. The flying spirits of the devic kingdom don’t have free will to choose, as humans do. They are totally committed, either to light and spirit or to darkness and materiality—that is, to evolutionary process or to counter-evolutionary forces that oppose and deny the positive ones. Humans are influenced by both these kinds of spirits, and evolve by learning and by choosing either the light or the dark. This devic kingdom is parallel but separate from the human. Human beings, their experiences and their actions, are a blend of the two, the light and the dark, in varying proportions.
In the Norse-Germanic tradition, the upper reaches of the upper world was called Asgard—the “garden of the Aesir sky gods.” This realm was imagined as being situated in the crown of the World Tree, or alternately, as a mountaintop castle built by giants. The dwelling place of the sky gods was portrayed in Greek mythology as Mount Olympus; as the Himalayas for the Vedic gods of ancient India; or as Mount Sinai, the vision place where Moses encountered the Hebrew creator deity Yahweh. These high sky gods are regarded, in most mythic traditions, as creator deities that created humans and animals, and arranged the lands and waters for them to live and thrive. Except for Yahweh, who is a solo male, they are male and female; mothers, fathers, and children; and they all regularly involve themselves in human affairs, supporting some humans and not others. In the Algonquian cosmology, the world above Sky Lodge was called Deep Sky Lodge—the realm of the high ancestral beings, where the souls of the dead may go. These mythic upper world realms can be considered subtle layers of the Atmosphere Sky World—all still integral to planet Earth.
In twentieth-century UFO mythology, there are numerous reports of hidden valleys or caves in remote high mountains as places where alien spaceships have been observed to disappear or emerge. Some observers and researchers, like the Israeli Sumerologist Zecharia Sitchin, say that the “immortal gods” described in ancient myths are actually ET visitors of humanoid appearance but taller, with superhuman abilities and weapons, and with life-spans of hundreds or even thousands of years—therefore appearing “immortal” to human beings. It was said that these aliens visited and colonized the Earth in preflood times and established the first actual human prototype lineages by genetic engineering—before departing again to their world of origin. It is my belief that we will, in time, learn to discern the truth behind these seemingly fantastical tales.
The world above and beyond the Atmosphere Sky World is the Solar System World, consisting of the whole planet Earth, the Moon, and the entire solar system with all its planets. Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker describe the modern scientific conception of the formation of our solar system—which is every bit as dramatic as any ancient myth.
Five billion years ago a shimmering cloud created by supernova explosions began its gravitational collapse into a thousand new star systems. Throughout this vast cloud, new centers of attraction appeared with an infant star, like a jewel shining at the heart of each center. One of these centers became our Sun with its eight planets—a solar system (Swimme and Tucker, 2011, p. 35).
The scientific origin story of the Moon, about 3 billion years ago, is no less fantastic and dramatic.
The process giving rise to our Moon began when a large planetesimal the size of Mars collided with Earth, plowing right through the surface in the most violent encounter Earth has ever experienced…Huge portions of both Earth and the colliding planetesimal were blasted out into space and formed a ring of lava around the Earth. The Moon and Earth, liquefied into magma by the collision, now separated and cooled (op. cit., p. 42).
The ancients perceived and believed that the Earth, the Moon, and all the planets are the physical bodies of multidimensional divine beings—and gave them the names of gods and goddesses in their mythology, telling stories of their various activities and inclinations. These are the names these planetary bodies still carry, although any “belief” in such deities has long since evaporated in the modern worldview. However, we do not have to accept as literally true all the various fantastic and entertaining stories the ancient poets and storytellers told about the planetary deities to recognize the essential value of tuning in with the spirit or consciousness embodied in the planets. Nor do we have to accept as literally true the symbolic associations with the planets encoded in the ancient divinatory arts of astrology, whether Eastern or Western, to explore meaningful connections between events on Earth and the ever-changing positions of the planets in the greater cosmic system.
We always begin our cosmic divination journeys by considering our perspective and our position on the basic triad of Earth, Moon, and Sun. All humans, and all plant and animal life, for that matter, are visibly and inevitably involved with the cycles of these three cosmic bodies. We observe and experience the daily turning of the Earth in the circadian rhythm: our consciousness expands at nighttime, when our part of the Earth is turned away from the Sun and we can perceive the vastness of the cosmos surrounding us. We can experience and observe also the subtle changes in our physiology and mood during the phases of the Moon—which have been incorporated in lunar ceremonies since ancient times. And we can note and celebrate the four great turning points of the Earth-Sun annual cycle, the equinoxes and solstices that mark the passing of the seasons of all our lives.
Beyond this basic triad, our awareness of the cycles of the other planets is more a function of the measurements of the astronomers and the ephemeris tables of the astrologers. In reviewing the synchronistic meaning of the planets in the language of astrology we are not concerned with proving or testing any particular theories or symbolic associations, although these have become so much part of the collective mind-field that they are virtually impossible to ignore. Instead one could think of divination journeys to the planets as a kind of experiential astrology—intentionally tuning in to the spirit of a planet, much as we might tune in with the spirit of a place on Earth, or a person in our community.
In my book Know Your Type (1979), I described how traditional astrology, supplemented by the fascinating and unusual clairvoyant observations of Emanuel Swedenborg and Edgar Cayce, could generate a description of the “spirits” of the different planets. If that planet was prominently positioned in a person’s horoscope, one could then say the person is experiencing or manifesting the quality or spirit of that planet. Here are some brief summary statements of the characteristics of the “planets” that can be derived from these sources (op. cit., pp. 122–133).
Mercury in astrology relates to the mind, the senses, memory, communication, perception, verbal expression, the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. Swedenborg wrote that “when the spirits of Mercury come to a man they can see in his memory all the particulars it contains…The spirits of Mercury have an exquisite perception, continually exploring what others know.”
Venus is traditionally the planet of love, beauty, harmony, refinement, and aesthetic appreciation. When Venus is prominent, romance, friendship, and conviviality are prime interests of the individual. Pleasure, creature comforts, sensory delights, and erotic values are highlighted.
Mars consciousness is that of the fighter: energy, assertion, aggression, and activity of all kinds, including sexual, predominate. Mars energy is expressed constructively as courage, power, and initiative, or destructively as violence, rage, jealousy, and impatience. Swedenborg wrote that “the spirits of Mars know not what hypocrisy is, nor fraudulent simulation and deceit.”
Jupiter is the principle of expansiveness, spirituality, and abundance, its character optimistic, extraverted, confident, and with broad-minded perspectives. With Jupiter prominent there is interest in universal principles and spiritual aspirations, benevolence and nobility.
Saturn in astrological symbolism is considered a teacher and taskmaster, fostering qualities of discipline, perseverance, patience, and orderliness. Prominent positioning of Saturn has been found in the horoscopes of scientists and physicians. Negatively aspected Saturn is traditionally associated with melancholy and anxiety.
Uranus is described as related to extremes of all kinds—exceptional abilities, mood swings, spectacular insights, and unusual intuitions. People with prominent Uranus configurations may be unusually gifted, eccentric, inventive, erratic, and creative.
Neptune is considered to have a subtle emotional, artistic, and mystical influence—with susceptibility to dreams, visions, fantasies, or rapturous states of consciousness; or negatively, susceptibility to delusions and illusions.
Pluto is symbolically indicative of concerns with power, isolation, and transformation, whether of the self or of the world. There can be psychic healing abilities or, negatively, psychopathic tendencies.
In our divination journeys to the planets, we considered these astrological symbolisms, as well as the writings of Cayce and Swedenborg, as preliminary mappings that can serve to inform our visionary journeys—recording and comparing observations, as with any scientific exploration in any realm. Furthermore, the groundbreaking work of Richard Tarnas in his book Cosmos and Psyche—systematically analyzing the birth positions of the outer planets, Jupiter and beyond, in the charts of crucial historical personalities and events—has provided a substantial body of evidence in support of a synchronistic reinterpretation of traditional astrological lore.
In the systems cosmology we have used in our exploratory visioning, the world above and beyond the Solar System Planetary World is the Deep Space World known as the Milky Way galaxy, with its hundreds of millions of stars and unknown numbers of millions of planets. Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker write that spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, in contrast to the more static elliptical galaxies, are always involved in dynamic processes of creativity.
Huge gravitational waves, called density waves, are pulsing through the Milky Way. In every spiral galaxy, the density waves cause the collapse of gas clouds into massive stars that burn brilliantly for a million years and then explode or die out. This spiral structure of a galaxy enables it to continue creating stars…Thus, by virtue of their architecture, spiral galaxies are the birthing galaxies in the universe (Swimme and Tucker, op. cit., p. 23).
In our explorations with the Tree of Worlds we have not journeyed consciously and intentionally to the galactic world. In other divination journeys, using the octave principle, as described in part seven, we have explored both macrocosmic and micro-cosmic worlds. I should add though that unintentional journeys in consciousness to the greater cosmos have been recorded in some near-death experiences (NDE), in some psychedelic drug trips, especially with LSD and 5-Meo-DMT, and in the accounts of some UFO abduction scenarios.
In the ancient Egyptian mythic cosmology, what we call the Milky Way galaxy was symbolically depicted as the goddess Nut, the deep dark space matrix of our world. The body of Nut, filled with stars, was portrayed in temple paintings as arching over the Earth, feet touching the Earth in the East and hands touching down in the West. At dawn, during what we call “sunrise,” they would see and say the Sun is being born out of the vulva of Nut and becoming visible on the turning Earth. At dusk, during what we call “sunset,” they would see and say the night-goddess Nut, leaning down in the West, is swallowing the Sun for its nightly journey through the darkness of the galactic womb.
There are three lower worlds that can be encountered on the first level realms “downward” on the axial tree from the central Middle Earth World. In the Nordic-Germanic mythic cosmology, there is the Stone Mountain World of the “black elves” (svartalfheim). These “black elves,” also known as dwarves or gnomes, are the spirits of stone, rock, metal, and fire; as the “light elves” are the spirits of winds, clouds, high trees, mountains, and raptor birds in the upper world. Dwarves were respected as master craftsmen and technicians and the guiding spirits of miners, smiths, and metalworkers. These spirits were regarded in ancient times as possessing superhuman skills and knowledge, and the mastery of fire, especially for the making of tools and weapons. Out of these mining and metallurgical crafts evolved the art of alchemy, the transmutation of matter, which was simultaneously a techno-material skill and a magico-spiritual practice.
In medieval European folklore, dwarves were believed to be small and ungainly, even misshapen and ugly, in contrast to the ethereal winged elves and sylphs. However, in the Norse Eddas and sagas, there is no suggestion that the dwarves are small and ugly. The only difference between them and the “light elves” is that they are “dark” or “black.” As I wrote in The Well of Remembrance:
It makes perfect sense that the spirits living under the earth, in caves, rocks, stones, minerals, and metallic ores, should be dark or black, when compared to the spirits of air and heliotropic plants. In my own vision quest experiences in the rocky deserts of North America, it also appeared to me that the spirits of rocks and stones reflect the shapes of the world they inhabit. They are massive, compacted, dense, twisted, cracked, rough-textured, and asymmetrical, lacking the harmonious proportions of the ethereal upper world spirits (Metzner, 1994, p. 208).
Like the giants, and unlike the elves and upper world spirits, the dwarves and gnomes are not disposed either for or against human beings and their interests. They have a special quality of consciousness that is nonhuman, but accessible to human shamans, scientists, inventors, engineers, and toolmakers, as well as seers, poets, and others in special states of inspiration and creativity. They are morally neutral towards human interests and values. The neutrality of the spirits of matter provides an insightful perspective on the monstrously destructive misuses and abuses, as well as creative inventions, to which technical knowledge and skills have been applied by human beings.
In the Algonquian cosmology, there was no realm associated with stone and metal, since the Native American peoples did not develop the technologies of metal—which, as we know, made them defenseless against the weaponry of the European conquerors. Instead, the world layered below the Earth Lodge or middle world was called Root Lodge. This realm had a reputation of being somewhat tricky to maneuver, as it was said that one could get entangled in the subterranean root systems of trees and bushes. This makes sense from a psychological perspective, since we tend to get hung up or entangled with the tendencies inherited and acquired from our ancestral and parental “roots.” To a great extent, the work of psychotherapy consists of disentangling the hidden ancestral and parental complexes that shape the early phases of our earthly existence.
From an ecological perspective, the Lower Earth World is the world of the nourishing soil in which we grow our food; of the mushroom mycelia that sustain the root systems of trees and provide sources of nourishment, healing, and visions; of snakes, lizards, turtles, and alligators that can be dangerous if not respected, but resonate with the serpentine, kundalini healing energies of our own reptilian brain systems; of ants, beetles, and countless other species of crawling insects; and of the bacterial microbes, both beneficial and toxic, that are pervasive in the internal ecology of our bodies as well as the environment. Many stories are told in folklore of the spirits perceived to be the primordial, nonhuman inhabitants of the Lower Earth World—the “little people” or “fairy folk,” the leprechauns of the Irish-Celtic world, or the menehune of the Hawaiian islands.
In the course I took with James Youngblood Henderson on Algonquian spirituality, I asked him if those tribes living near the sea or by major rivers also recognized specialized nature spirits relating to watery environments, which he confirmed. I am calling this realm, a subdivision of the lower world, the Sea River World, where those humans live who sustain themselves primarily from river and ocean fishing. A prime example would be the cultures of the Pacific Northwest for whom the migrating salmon is the totemic animal around which all village life is organized. The ocean animal spirits recognized here, besides salmon, are seals, otters, dolphins, and whales. In river estuaries and marshes we also have badgers and beavers, as well as snakes and lizards.
In European mythology the ocean and water spirits were called mermaids, nymphs, undines, or sirens. A well-known story about sirens is told in Homer’s Odyssey: the wily warrior had heard that there were some dangerously rocky islands where the sirens lived, and that their singing was so irresistibly seductive that sailors would inadvertently run their boats ashore to get closer to them. Odysseus, desiring to hear the unearthly siren song, had his men tie him to the ship’s mast, while stuffing their ears with wax, so he could hear the gorgeous music and yet be safely escorted through the tricky narrow gorge.
Some years ago, while I was traveling along the rocky shores of the Pacific Northwest coast, where there are some formations with spectacularly crashing waves and awesome sound effects, at times like voices. I understood then a deeper ecological meaning behind the story of Odysseus and the siren song. For sailors navigating near such rocky shores, hearing sounds like human voices functioned as a navigational signal that you were getting too close to shore and were in danger of crashing your ship. The mythic siren song was not so much a temptation to lure sailors to their death, but rather a warning not to get too close to the dangerous rocks.
From a naturalistic perspective, there is a distinctive area of the Lower Earth World, an intermediate environment of marshes and swamps, home of the egg-laying amphibian frogs and toads, as well as water snakes and magnificent insects such as dragonflies. Frogs and toads play significant roles in numerous folktales of witchcraft and myths involving magical transformations, such as the frog who is turned back into his original princely form by the kiss of the princess he loves. Furthermore, one of the most powerful visionary hallucinogens known to science, 5-methoxy-DMT, is found in the exudate of the Sonora Desert toad, Bufo alvarius, for whom it serves as a predator deterrent. Ingested by humans in the form of a smoke or a snuff, it can induce profound healings and cosmic mystical visions.
In the Norse-Germanic worldview the underworld realm below the home of the dwarves was called Hel, the realm of the dead. In the stories and poems of the Edda, Hel is simply a place where those go who die of sickness and old age, unlike the warriors slain in battle, whose spirits are taken up by Odin to Valhalla. Since the dead were buried in underground chambers, it was natural to think of their spirits resting “below.” It was not a purgatory or a place of eternal damnation, as the later English term hell and the German Hölle suggest. “To go to Hel” simply meant “to die.” Hel is the name of the place and also of the goddess of this realm, who is comparable to the Greek Persephone, the Sumerian Ereshkigal, and the White Lady of the Old European traditions.
Residues of a more positive conception of Hel as a form of the Great Triple Goddess are found in the Germanic folklore surrounding Frau Holle or Holda, a benign old woman who protects and nourishes children and has great wealth at her disposal. This connects Hel the goddess with the Vanir earth deities of prosperity and abundance. The deity ruler of the underworld realm is also the deity of wealth, particularly mineral wealth and gold, as shown in the figure of the Roman Pluto (Greek Hades) from whose name we have the term “plutocracy”—rule of the wealthy.
In Greek mythology Hades and Dionysos, the god of intoxication, were somehow connected, like twins or like two versions of the same being. One of the cryptic sayings of the sage Heraclitus was, “and Dionysos, through whom they go into trance and speak in tongues and for whom they beat the drum, do they not realize that he is the same as Hades, Lord of the Dead?” Perhaps this was pointing to the parallels between the realm of the dead, who have lost their bodies, and the realm of the intoxicated, who have lost their minds. In ancient Egypt too, Osiris, who was equated to Dionysos, had a green-skinned form as the god of vegetative growth and nourishment, and a white-skinned form as the ruler of the underworld of the dead.
In the Algonquian world axis conception, there is nothing comparable to the realm of Hel—an underground realm of damp, hungry, and listless departed ghosts. Instead, below the Roots Lodge, there is the Deep Earth Lodge, the caves where the Ancient Ones or Grandmothers gather, and where humans gather to receive inspiration and visions for their lives. We may call this deepest of the lower worlds on the great axial tree the Deep Earth World.
In the Nordic-Germanic mythic conception there was a well or spring near the roots of the world tree, where the Three Norns live, ageless goddesses who determined the destinies of humans and gods. This was also the realm of the tree giant Mimir, known as the Keeper of the Axis, who guards divinatory access to the well of memory at the deep roots of the world tree.
Mimir was the name of an ancient and wise giant who guarded the well and who allowed Odin to drink from it to acquire primordial knowledge. Germanic and Celtic mythology and folklore has many allusions to a sacred spring or well, or sometimes cauldron, a drink from which afforded access to the otherworld and to hidden knowledge. In Eurasian shamanic traditions, a spring, a well, or the root of a tree can serve as the entrance for a shamanic journey to the lower world. Thus drinking from the well at the tree root is a metaphor for direct experiential knowledge of our fate and our roots…the way of ancestral knowledge, the way of remembering our origins (Metzner, 1994, pp. 215–216).
The norns were said to be ageless, both young and old, “awesome giantesses,” who determined the fates of humans and gods. Urd, the name of one of the norns and also the name of the well, is related to the Anglo-Saxon wyrd (or it’s modern descendant “weird”), which meant destiny, power, and magic. Verdandi is related to the German word werden, “becoming.” Skuld is related to the German words Schuld (guilt) and Schulden (debts)—the debts we owe in life, including those inherited from our ancestors and those incurred in past lives.
In The Well of Remembrance, I suggested that Skuld is roughly comparable to the Hindu idea of karma, a fate that can’t be avoided—that is, the past; that Verdandi is the present time—what is in process of becoming or developing; and that Urd is comparable to the Hindu conception of dharma, our future, our destiny, our way in life. The norns symbolize the guiding forces of our fates and destinies on this Earth, in this life. Perhaps we can say the upper world spirits connected with the planets are more involved with our possible other lives in other worlds.
In our divination journeys we have learned to tune in with the norns and ask them questions about our fate and our destiny. Answers of course are not guaranteed, but the process of questioning makes one receptive to what insights may come. One woman participant in our circles in Sweden, who had made an intensive study of their mythology, related that, in her visions, “the norns had no faces. When I looked into their faces there was just an emptiness. My eyes could stare at any place except at their faces. Then I became transformed into a norn myself and realized that all the answers were inside myself. The norns were mythic metaphors for helping me to realize this.”
The planetary core below the Deep Earth World is not a world we have visited in our intentional personal divinations—although in theory it should be possible. Contemporary science has only penetrated with its instruments to these deep layers and the core to a limited extent. What we are seeing in the contemporary view is a dynamic planet, seething and roiling with inconceivable power, the continental tectonic plates drifting and colliding—the very opposite of the traditional view of Earth as an epitome of solidity and stability. The Earth’s core is thought by some geologists to be in the form of a single iron crystal, or a series of giant crystals running north to south. Cosmologist Brian Swimme has summarized our current scientific knowledge of Earth’s composition as follows:
Earth’s story is one of a planet finding a way to remain in the creative zone between the chaos of roiling gas and the rigidity of solid rock. When Earth was still in a partially molten state, gravity drew the heaviest metals, such as iron and nickel, thousands of miles into the core. These accumulated, and eventually this dense iron core extended halfway up to the surface. Piling on top of the core came matter such as iron-rich silicates and magnesium, component of the denser rocks. These iron-bearing magnesium silicates formed the middle area of the Earth, the mantle. Lastly, Earth’s crust formed around the mantle. Only 10 to 100 miles thick, the crust is composed of light felsic rock, like granite, surrounded by large areas of ocean crust, largely formed of basaltic rocks, crystallized from upwelling magma. We can imagine Earth as an egg. Its inner core is like the yolk, its mantle is like the egg white, and its crust is like the shell (Swimme and Tucker, 2011, p. 39).
There is a profound analogy, or one could even say identity, between the power of gravity at the planetary level and the power of love at the human level. I first heard of this from my teacher Russell Schofield, who would say in a poetic way, “The Earth holds all life and matter to her core, the way a mother holds all her children to her bosom.” Peter Russell has also talked about this analogy—indeed it is implicit in the etymological connection between the word “matter” and the Latin mater, mother.
The most elegant expression of this cosmic connection I’ve come across is in the writings of Buckminster Fuller. Here are some of his formulations from his volumes Synergetics and Synergetics II (1975, 1979). The numbers refer to his paragraph numbering system across both volumes.
541.18 Gravity uses energy more efficiently than radiation, which accounts for the eternal dominance of syntropy over entropy. The energy conserved is invested in constant transformative transpositioning of the eternal regeneration of Universe. The dominance of syntropy over entropy is the dominance of the metaphysical over the physical and guarantees an eternal resolution of all conflicts between the physical and the metaphysical. Mind will always win over energy. Omniconsiderative love will always win out over ruthless selfishness.
543.22 Love is the integral of gravity and radiation. Energy as either radiation or matter is the summa frequency, local-in-Universe, aberrational palpitation of comprehensive gravity enhancement.
1005.62 Because man is so tiny and Earth is so great, we only can see gravity operating in the perpendicular. We think of ourselves as individuals with gravity pulling us Earthward individually in perpendiculars parallel to one another. But we know that in actuality, radii converge. We do not realize that you and I are convergently interattracted because gravity is so big. The interattraction is there, but it seems so minor we dismiss it as something we call “aesthetics” or a “love affair.” Gravity seems so vertical.
In the next chapter I will describe how we can practice divinatory journeys to the upper worlds of elves and planetary deities, to the lower worlds of roots and dwarves and mermaids, and to the deep Earth realm of the norns and Mimir the Rememberer.