Blood And Fire: The Ordeal Path

There are no bindings holding her up against the tree, because she is here of her own free will. She had asked to be bound, to hold her against her fear and keep her from bolting off into the woods, but the one to whom her mentor had handed her over had refused her even that. "You'll stand for it under your own power, or you shouldn't be taking this on," he said. So here she is, in the dark, standing under the trees on the land of some Rokkr shaman who scares her just to look at him, her arms wrapped around the rough bark and her forehead pressed into it. She feels the tree's energy thrumming beneath her. It is a comfort.

This is only the first of nine ordeals that He has said she must endure. He needs His warriors strong and knowledgeable about the dark places, and after all, He spent nine years seeking out the Ordeal Path, culminating in His time hanging on the Tree close to death. What's a little mortal pain, to Him? The Tree....she clings closer to the ash bark, wondering if He felt bark against His skin, when the time came.

But this is not that time. This is only the first one, the one to honor the ancestors in Hel's land, and it is Hel's shaman who initiates her, because besides Him, it is the Rokkr who understand this path the best. To learn it, she must go into their lands of darkness and learn their painful mysteries, and like Him, she will take that knowledge away and use it herself someday, perhaps on some young man ulfhednar-bound who will stand as she stands, hanging onto a tree - a Tree - for dear life, waiting for the pain.

The first touch comes, and it makes her flinch, but it is just a gloved hand between her naked shoulder blades. "Breathe," the voice behind her says. "Breathe in between every stroke, and out after each one. Breathe in the rune, let it come into your body, let leave what must leave." Then the hand is gone, and she is alone in the dark, and he begins to sing in a voice that rips through the air. It is a rune song. She flinches, even before the whip falls, from the pounding of his galdr. Then the first blow falls, and she knows Pain. Feoh, she whispers. The rune sings into her, on the song, on the pain, green and gold and abundant, beaten into her soul by way of her body. Not just a sigil, a divinatory symbol, but a spirit...one who will ally with her now, because it has been blown through her skin and her shields.

Almost before she can remember to gulp breath again, the second line of the song comes and the second blow. Ur. It comes into her like a great grey bolt, out of her like a grunt. Then the next - Thorn - remember to breathe! and then Aesc, His rune. The blows come just fast enough for her to absorb the last one, sometimes too fast. Breathe. Breathe. Weep. Sob into the rough bark. The runes she knows slam into her, inexorably, and then comes the verse with the others, the new ones whom she has not met. Hel's aett, dark and forboding, but these too are Mysteries to be known to her. Then it is over, and her fingers slip from the trunk. Her throat is raw - had there been screaming? The man catches her with one hand, lowers her to the blanket laid next to the Tree.

But it is not over; she hears the sound of leather gloves being exchanged for latex ones, packages being opened, her back being swabbed with pungent alcohol. It renews the pain and she groans. Then his fingers finding a spot on her lower spine that has not been touched. "Breathe," he says, and she does, and a scalpel opens her skin. Next to her head is a pot of ashes, still warm from the burning; they are herbs gathered with prayer and intent, to take their essence into her body. Burnt to sterile ashes, they still have power humming about them, as if the burning merely made them more concentrated. Her blood flows, and a latex-gloved hand forces its way into her mouth, making her taste it. Then it dips into the pot and the ash is smeared into the wound, to heal later into a fine grey line, the first of nine bind runes cut into her. The first badge of her strength. Nine ordeals, nine worlds. When she reaches Asgard, the rune will bind the base of her skull, and He will be better able to enter her. She would give all the blood and pain in the world for that.

The Ordeal Path is probably the most frightening of all these Paths to the outsider looking in. It uses pain, fear, suffering, and discomfort for the purposes of achieving altered states, coming out of them, creating energy for magical work, cleansing, breaking down internal barriers, and offerings to the Spirits. From a distance, it looks horrifying, especially to people of our modern culture who see all pain as something uselessly awful to be avoided at all costs. People who inflict pain on themselves, or help someone else to create pain, are seen as sick and dangerous. But to our ancestors, it wasn't necessarily like that.

I remember being a child and seeing a film in my school about the history of Native American peoples, and it briefly mentioned the Lakota Sun Dance and included snapshots of a century-old illustration. It was dramatic and bloody, with braves hanging on hooks from the rafters of a tipi-like structure, their faces contorted with pain. I can still remember the squeals of disgust from the other kids around me. Not only could we not imagine something like that happening, we couldn't imagine anyone doing it and living. To us kids in that classroom, that kind of apparent damage might be fatal, and the idea of deliberate self-inflicted suffering was incomprehensible...yet many of those same children went to a church every Sunday where the main figure on the altar was a crucified, suffering man.

Yet we have our own such icons in the northern tradition, the most obvious being Odin who traveled as a beggar on the roads, learned seidhr painfully in skirts, tore out one of his own eyes and threw it in Mimir's well, and ended up hanging in agony on the World Tree for nine days. There is also his counterpart and blood brother Loki, who is repeatedly imprisoned, tortured, starved, has his mouth sewn shut, and is raped by a stallion, just to name a few of his adventures. Fenris is chained and stabbed, and Tyr has his arm bitten off for the safety of his tribe. Frey walks willingly to the fields every year to be ritually sacrificed for the fertility of Vanaheim. Iduna is imprisoned, turned into a nut, and rescued by flight. Both Angrboda and Gullveig (who may or may not be Freya) are burned three times over. Baldur is pierced with mistletoe, Loki's son Vali is turned into a ravenous wolf who then kills his brother, and there are many more tales like these. The Northern myths are full of bloody sacrifice, whichever way one turns.

Of course, just because a deity goes through a sacred mythic ordeal, willing or unwilling, does not mean that everyone who works with that deity ought to do the same. This Path is not for everyone, or even for most people, and that's as it should be. On the other hand, if an ordeal is necessary, there is greater power in linking that ordeal ritual to the paths blazed by the bloody footprints of a God in pain, if only by doing it in their honor. Linking it in this way draws divine power into it, gives it greater depth, and can take you much further than going there alone. Being suspended on hooks from a living tree has its own power, as does being cut, bound, beaten, and buried in the Earth for a time, or being bound with chains while one wrestles with one's inner wrath. However, when those rites are done in the name of Odin, or Frey, or Fenris, with attention paid to details that bring the experience closer, the rite becomes transpersonal - done not just for one's self but for the Cosmos as well. If it is done publicly, the people who choose to witness are blessed with further understanding as well.

I should disclaimer right now that the sort of applied pain and discomfort that best serves the purposes of the Ordeal Path is not that which is most injurious. In fact, serious injuries tend to put one into shock, which is not an altered state that is easily usable for magical purposes. Instead, the best sort of pain for the job is that which gives the body just enough sensation to set off the right brain chemistry, sustained over a period of time, but not enough to do any permanent damage. For purposes of this chapter, "non-injurious pain" is defined as something that does not leave any damage that can't be easily healed up over a period of days without professional medical help. A cutting or branding may leave a scar, a flogging may leave bruises and welts, a tattoo is clearly a deliberate mark, but none of these will impair the person's daily functioning in any way, provided that the work is done skillfully on the right areas of the body.

For a concentrated look on the spirituality and techniques of the Ordeal Path that is more than this small chapter can cover, we encourage folks to get a copy of Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path from Asphodel Press. This is the first major text about how this path is done deliberately in a pagan-religious context, and while it is not northern-tradition per se, there are a lot of useful spiritual techniques and thought-provoking ideas from its various authors that are worth reading for anyone going into this kind of work. It also goes into much greater detail about how to create ordeal rites for people.

When it comes to actually learning how to do the physical techniques of this path - whipping, cutting, tattooing, branding, piercing, hook suspension, etc. - there is no way to learn this properly from books. Please, please find people who are skilled in these techniques and properly apprentice to them. It dishonors the techniques and those who passed them on to us to hack through them sloppily; they should be done carefully and with the proper training, and with attention to detail and to sterile procedure. The latter, too, is very important. Believe me when I say that if our ancestors had been able to procure rubbing alcohol, Technicare, and sterile packaged implements, they would have used them. Getting an infection from a poorly sanitized ordeal rite is a bad omen and does no honor to Those whom we serve. Remember that this is the Path that is second only to the Path of Sacred Plants when it comes to the ability to kill the body or put someone in the hospital, and move with respect.

It should go without saying that a spirit-worker should never do an ordeal for a client if they aren't skilled in the techniques that the client requests, even if it sounds like what is needed. If it's that important, find someone else who can do it and send the client over, or team up with the person who can do it. For example, I am not a tattoo artist, but I've run rituals for people who wanted sacred tattoos, with me directing what was happening and the actual work being done by a Pagan tattoo artist who had the equipment and the skill.

On the other hand, there are ordeals that can be done without learning physical-trauma skills. One example might be a fear/trust ordeal, where someone is blindfolded and led through a dangerous area by a guide, or just into parts unknown in order to do something unexpected. Another might be having other people embody and say aloud the things which you fear to hear, or which trigger you, in a space where you are honor-bound to stay and hear it and not lash out. Ordeals can also include simple endurance rather than pain - for example, climbing a mountain to do a rite, or standing vigil and praying for a long period of time, or trance dancing for hours. Many of techniques of the other Paths, if done well past the point of comfort, become part of the Ordeal Path as well.

Spirit-workers in this tradition might use the Ordeal Path themselves for various purposes, including but not limited to:

1) Bringing the mind to a deep trance state where the soul can separate from it and do work. When noninjurious pain is applied to the body in the right manner, endorphins and other chemicals flood the brain and cause altered states of consciousness. Even for those who don't make endorphins well - perhaps because of chronic illness - adrenalin can also be used for similar purposes, although it creates a very different kind of state than the morphine-like endorphins. This kind of pain-use has been around for millennia; it's easier and safer than taking plants into your system, and it requires only your own body and a knowledge of what to do with its flesh and nerve endings. An example of this might be a seer or diviner using a pain ordeal to move through a block and force their mind out of the everyday chatter of life, in order to get better clarity on an important question.

2) Assisting in moving through shaman sickness. When one is literally spiritually dying in order to be reborn again, usually with a physical illness of some kind along with it, a pain ordeal that brings one temporarily closer to that moment of spiritual Death can hasten the period of shaman sickness. It won't make it go away entirely, and despite what some people say you can't do a series of ordeals instead of going through any shaman sickness in order to get to the same point. It is true that some would-be shamans have, in the past, subjected themselves to terrible ordeals that mimic the effects of shaman sickness in order to get the attention of the Spirits and be chosen by them, but once the Spirits have noticed them, it is assumed that they will trigger the actual shaman sickness, and these ordeals are just a preliminary. However, repeated ordeals (with the aid of the Gods and wights that one works with) during shaman sickness can move its course along more vividly, and get the suffering shaman out the other end quicker and perhaps with more of their health intact.

3) Removing psychic impurities and injuries; deep cleansing. As Galina Krasskova describes below in her experience of removing elfshot via a cutting, sometimes it takes an ordeal to get out particularly stubborn impurities. Our jobs are dangerous, and we often come in contact with astral substances that most people don't ever touch, especially when we are cleaning them out of the bodies of clients. If the "infection" spreads to the spirit-worker, it needs to be removed before it can get deeply rooted and interfere with their ability to function, and for serious problems that means drastic measures. There's also some kinds of ordeals can give the astral body a good shake back into the correct position, as it were, and flush out any number of built-up day-to-day toxins.

4) Aftercare; bringing the soul and consciousness back into the body. Spirit-workers who find trance easy and living in the body much more difficult may find it hard to come back from a dissociative state after journey-work. Pain, and especially random uneven pain - the exact opposite of the sort of pain used to create an altered state - is good for forcibly returning the consciousness to the body. When you're in that kind of pain, you have to be here, so some of us utilize that in order to keep ourselves present in our flesh after long draining travels. For this one, you really need the talents of an assistant who is trained in the particular sort of discomfort that brings you back to yourself...and ideally one who will salve up the damage afterwards.

5) Raising a fund of energy to work with. This is similar to some of the techniques used for the Path of the Flesh, in that one is using bodily sensations to raise more energy than can be done with the body in a quiescent mode. The difference between the two is that while the energy used with the Path of the Flesh is orgasm - and orgasm can only last so long - noninjurious or mildly injurious pain can be extended for a much longer period of time than orgasm, and be even more intense. The energy raised via ordeal has a particular flavor - it is raw, strong, hot, and a bit rough for gentle purposes, so plan accordingly. Often this is the Energy Of Last Resort, the thing that you do in psychic emergencies when a great battery of power is needed immediately.

6) Making an offering to a God or wight. Many deities enjoy or at least honor pain that is given to them as an offering, especially if they are the darker members of the Rokkr pantheon, or Odin whose roads often lead down this Path. Generally, any deity involved with death or destruction will appreciate it, and some will hardly give you the time of day without it. An extreme example of this is Fenris, who is fed by being summoned into the body of a bound horse who is then given pain infliction, and the Great Wolf feeds on it.

7) A hunt for power. This is when ordeals are used as a rite of finding strength and courage. Even spirit-workers sometimes get to feeling despairing, helpless, and incompetent, and may need to remember their own strength and power through enduring trials or facing their fears. The old saying goes, "Where there's fear, there's power," and most people have innumerable fears around pain. Once anyone has gone through it and survived, discovered borders of their own strength that they never knew that they could endure, there is more strength and power available to them.

Even if a spirit-worker is not drawn to the ordeal path for themselves, they may be called upon to do it for clients. A client might need an ordeal for any of the above reasons plus several others, such as: A rite of passage, to prove to themselves that they are adult, or to celebrate a turning point in their lives. Facing a fear or phobia. Mourning or grieving a loss or death, especially for those who have trouble releasing such emotions. Learning trust, in other humans or in the divine. Opening their boundaries to the Gods. Shutting off the inner voices and achieving a short period of blissful silence. Celebrating the body (this last seems like a non sequitur, but the feeling of "aliveness in the flesh" that follows an effective physical ordeal is a form of celebrating to some people).

When a client comes to you and asks you to facilitate an ordeal rite for them, remember that it isn't about you. Even if you are the scariest and most impressive thing in the ritual, you have to be selfless about it. The rite is designed for their needs, not yours. On the other hand, you have to be strong enough not to break down and decide that you can't handle this - the responsibility, the pain in their eyes, seeing yourself as an inflicter of suffering. An Ordeal Master must be utterly ruthless, compassionate, and have no ego involved in the process. Even if you enjoy it, it's a service job, like everything else that we do.

That means that we have to be very careful to design an ordeal around what would really work for that person, rather than what we might like to do or see done to them, or what our favorite technique is, or what we're really in the mood for. Divination is good for this sort of thing.

Working With Ordeals
by Lydia Helasdottir

Why do it? Why do crazy painful things to your body? First, let me say this: I don't think that ordeal work is appropriate before a certain level is attained in your work. If you look at a cabalistic model - not so much accepting the entire cabalistic world-view, but just as a glyph of progression - I think ordeal stuff comes in after Paraketh, after you've got your independent solar furnace. Before that, it's too destructive. It's too easy to get yourself into a "Yes, I really must sacrifice to people who just want to beat on me" or "I just need to beat on people, so I'll pretend it's spiritual." Having said that, I've been doing vicious things to people since I was very young, and I wasn't attained at all, but I would say that the magical part of it starts after you've reached a point of having the divine indwelling to some extent. The early stuff is about learning technique - hurting without harming.

What is it for? Many things. Purification and hunting power, to name a couple. Purification includes regaining humility, offering the pain to a deity in a bhakti-yoga sense, and to recognize the illusory nature of manifestation. It's a courage-increasing activity - once you've hung from hooks, asking your boss for a pay raise is not that big a deal. That's a typical example of a power-hunting application. For me, ordeal is a measure of how far you've come, and what you can do. For those of us who have big "not good enough" complexes, the ordeal path is great for that. For those with big dysphoria issues, it's good for that too. For those who've got big ego issues, it's great for that because you can be seriously humbled by it.

I'll give certain examples of that. Kavadi, for instance, is an offertory rite. In Kavadi you wear a frame that carries spears that press into your flesh. The religious aspect of it is that you offer the pain to the god who is associated with the ritual. It's a devotion. From an engineering-energetic point of view, those spears act like huge antennae. First of all, you collect crud onto your energy body just from walking around in the world. With the spears, this pierces the crud, and it sort of crumbles and falls away. It's almost like you're taking a jackhammer to it, and when you come out of the ordeal you're fresh. It's the same with doing a hook suspension; you often leave the crud hanging from the hooks and you get torn out of the crud. It stays behind. It's all about breaking into pieces and being freed of the layers of crud that you get from interacting with the world.

Kavadi opens your crown chakra in a big way. The first time that I did Kavadi, I was seeing the world differently. My point of view had shifted to a place about four inches above the top of my head, and that was where I was seeing everything from. I couldn't stop it, and it lasted about two days, and it had a permanent effect of opening the crown chakra. For two days, that was where my point of view was, unless I forcibly brought it down to where my physical eyes were. It was a very strange sensation.

Hook suspensions have been around in the Tamil environment and in that of certain Native American tribes for thousands of years. It's been around to a lesser extent in the Urals where you'd have piercings and sit on top of high things, but not necessarily in the same way. How that works is that it's a huge offering of fear and lack of self-confidence, and just pushing through that. It's related to firewalking. The first time you go up on hooks, you just don't have any hope of being able to do it. It's certain failure. You put the hooks in, and you start to put tension on the string, and the moment any tension comes on it, you're saying "Whoa, no, stop!" And you think, fucking hell, I'm supposed to have my whole body weight on this? And you freak out, and you go into a pit of despair, sure that you're not going to be able to do this.

And in fact, most of the time that we do the "pre-flight briefing" with the person, we tell them that there will come a point where you will think to yourself, "There is no way in hell that I can do this." And you have to move on. We actually do this in a series of little plateaus, where you put the pressure on the hooks, and the nerves register the change and freak out. But if you then leave it there at that level, they get used to it, and after five or six breaths you can go to the next level. Some people like to get through it real quick, just "take me up and go through the whole thing at once". For me, that's a waste of the experience, especially for the first time. I want people to experience the full set of "I can't do this" to "ohmigod, I'm doing this!" The incremental process is important.

There are those who do suspensions for sport, thrill-seeking, and it does have a specific effect when you're actually up there, because then it doesn't actually hurt much any more. But people should experience the full process from just lying here with the hooks in, to "oh, they moved and I'm going to puke!" to the moment when they realize that their hooks are getting light on the table, and they are really going to be able to take off at some point too. I have taken off and had it be unbelievable. Especially if you do it with the hooks in your back and the weight in your belly, it doesn't hurt once you get lifted up. If you compare it to, say, flying in a hang-glider harness, it is actually more comfortable, because your whole body is suspended by your skin. Your nerves, where the hooks are, are compressed and they aren't feeling anything any more. You can take about 140 pounds per hook, and you are floating in the air! It's the closest you can come to flapping your wings and taking off. It's really an amazing feeling. I'd advocate it to anyone who is drawn to the ordeal path, purely as an experience of overcoming fear and being rewarded with a marvelous thing.

A fair bit of it is endorphins, but endorphins only last about a half hour to maybe an hour, and everything that happens after that is not endorphins any more. Yes, some people, especially those who have been in chronic pain for a long time, no longer make endorphins; they've used it all up. So perhaps it might not work for some of them, but on the other hand, the guy that I know who loves this the most is someone who is in that chronic pain, and for whom endorphins don't work. He has to get given morphine shots for his pain, it's so bad. But this works great for him, because it's a distraction. The endorphin high may start you off, get you over the initial hump, but it is trivial compared to what is really going on. The reason why the hook suspension doesn't hurt is not because of endorphins but because the nerves are compressed. The nerve reacts to change, not to pure pressure, which is why gunshot wounds don't hurt that much after a while; there's no change to register.

You can distinguish the endorphin-feeling from the underlying chemistry, though. It's like when you get a big tattoo done - the first ten minutes are annoying, the next 90 minutes are kind of OK because the endorphins are there, and after that it becomes awful again. If you carry on past that point, it becomes transcendent, so sometimes the endorphins are actually getting in the way. Some people who do suspensions will actually do things to use up the endorphins beforehand, because of that.

You can certainly use the Ordeal Path as an altered state, but you have to ask: what's the purpose of this altered state? As for things that it's especially good for, there's atonement. Beyond simple purification - getting rid of the crud - if you're a person who suffers from guilt, then you can pay for things with discomfort. It's also a very great relativising force, so if you're a person that tends towards the obsessive or whiny, undergoing a proper, seriously difficult ordeal will make the things that you usually whine about seem much less onerous.

Probably its most potent use, though, is for hunting power, through going into fear and out again. Where fear is, there's power, because fear locks up a lot of power, and if you can go through a fear, or dissolve a fear, or do something despite having a fear, you can then bring that extra energy cell into your body, and you've got more juice than before because you hunted that stuff up. For me, also, it's a way of getting raw; breathing, eating, and life in general becomes quite a lot more interesting. It's a kind of anti-jading mechanism. If you get really properly frightened or really properly challenged, the very fact of being alive becomes a gift. It's the opposite of being bored or numbed-out.

I have noticed also that deities can amplify discomfort a lot. I'd modify a quote by Fakir Musafar and define pain as "an intense sensation that was either unexpected or undesired." What you're doing when you're taking an ordeal on is that you're receiving an intense sensation, but the negative connotations of the word pain frighten you. If you're in chronic pain, you expect it, but you don't desire it. Conversely, I do not like to stub my toe. This is a bad thing. I do not like to have a migraine. Gut cramps suck. But in terms of an experience of overcoming something, pain is really potent, and deities can amplify or remove it.

I had an experience where I fell while walking in the mountains and I dislocated my kneecap. Now normally I can just kind of dissociate from any kind of discomfort if I need to, but there was no dissociating from that. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Where the nice dome of the patella should be, there was a dip, and the patella was all the way out to the side. I didn't dare push it back, because I didn't know if there would be nerve damage by doing that. I was like that for an hour and a half while people went down the mountain and got me an ambulance. The point of it, I'm sure, was to endure the madness of really, really bad pain with no safe word, no way out. It just ripped through my whole body like a high-pitched whine; there was no escaping it. It screwed with my breathing. In fact, interestingly enough, there happened to be a midwife there, and she sat at my head and did all the breathing out and in, and that helped, but as soon as I realized that the van had come and they were going to have to lift, me, I freaked out again. And I had done years of breathing control, but this was unexpurgated madness. They picked me up and put me in the van; I was terribly afraid to scream, because I didn't want to upset people, so as they picked me up I warned them that I might have to scream. And then there was this amazing noise in the background - for a moment I thought that it was a sawmill or something - and then I realized that it was me, making this wounded-animal horrendous scream. They took me into the clinic and shot me up with morphine, but it didn't touch it at all.

The point of this is that I'm glad I had that experience, even though I don't ever want it to happen again, thank you very much, but it took me to the outer edge of a place where people in pain go. And ever since then, pain has basically been a cakewalk, including Kavadis, and terrible discomfort while running - you notice that I use the word "discomfort"; it's not really pain. Pain is what happens when your kneecap is dislocated; this is discomfort.

When I had my midriff tattoo, it was done by my teacher, and she was deliberately inflicting pain - partly because we both agreed that it would be good as an ordeal, partly because she was pissed at me - but I sang the pain out then. These are all good techniques for dealing with pain - singing it, breathing it out, or trying to distract yourself. One of the things I've found really helpful is to actually go to the inside of the pain - and I find this particularly helpful during running - and say, "OK, what is this exactly? How does it feel to be next to it? How does it feel to be next to it on the other side?" And just kind of get into what is this sensation exactly, and what is it telling me? Of course, if you're doing an ordeal where many things are happening at once, you don't have the luxury of just meditating on that one particular thing. For single things, like rope bondage or clothespins where it's pretty stable, you can have them meditate on that.

I like the courage aspect of it, I like the cleansing aspect of it. I like the worthiness aspect of it. It's an initiation, a quest, a warrior thing. Now you belong to this group of people who have done this. We sometimes say, when people have done their first suspension, "Welcome to the Club." You're now irrevocably in the special elite club of people who have done this, and in terms of the number of people on the planet, that's not that many.

We know that the Jotunfolk do violent sex - at least, those of us who work with them know that. We know that they do warrior ordeals, and coming-of-age ordeals, and the whole hunter-warrior-lord thing. Angrboda for us is a very strong source of inspiration for us for that stuff, because she seems to specialize in that; the whole "How good are you really?" aspect of ordeals seems to be her forte. Other deities who understand ordeals: Tyr; Odin on the Tree, Angrboda - it's less well written about her, but her spawning monsters is a hint to me of that. Besides, you can go ask her about it. Hela teaches it, but in a very ritualistic sort of way. And of course Fenrir teaches it.

When I wrote the love song to Fenrir, I wrote about the fact that there's no letting it be, sometimes you have to do this to ensure that the world is enlivened. It's an anti-stagnation effect. People are generally so blunted by their daily experience that they don't get anything new and stimulating. For me to take some suburbanite and scare the shit out of them until they piss themselves with fear, or hang them by hooks, or take them on a mountaineering expedition, whatever it is, invariably at the end of it, people look at you and say, "God, I'd forgotten how good it is to be alive." Taking people to the edge of their limits is empowering. I think it's actually good for people with big egos to be shown where their limits are. From a "giving it up" point of view, it's all right to lose control in those situations, because you're in a primal state of worry for your ongoing existence, and it's OK to let go of all the usual stuff.

And if someone was saying this who hadn't actually gone out and done these ordeals, you'd say, "Romanticized crap! Why don't you actually go out and do it, then?" But I have done it for a long time, and I still feel this way about it, because it works. BDSM, for example, is just a sexually-charged way to go through ordeals assisted by someone else, whether it's a shame-confronting, or fear-confronting, or pain-confronting ordeal. Whatever the issue is, get the demon out there and fight it for real. That's where the power is. There are a hundred books on how to do it, but it's nothing to actually doing it.

There's a great book on this by Anita Phillips called A Defense of Masochism, and she argues that you deal with the overwhelmingness of the Universe by actively inviting a part of it to come and ravish and invade you, just puncture your boundaries and overwhelm you, and that's how you deal with the largeness of it all. The other thing that she was on about - which was quite interesting - was that for some people, it's hard to feel like they have any boundaries, or who they are at all, and to be invaded and ravaged means that there was a boundary to cross. You can then feel where it is, particularly for people with identity issues. "I don't know who I am." Well, put them in enough pain, and ravage them, and invade the boundary, and suddenly they know where the boundary is and they can defend it. But until they've experienced where it is, they don't know how.

It can be very therapeutic, but it's not a substitute for therapy. However, in the hands of someone who is actually a psychopomp, somebody capable, it can be very therapeutic. It can replace, or be a better therapeutic intervention, or replace many other kinds of therapeutic interventions. But to see every scene as therapy, or to foist your issues onto your top without talking about it first, or saying that "This needs to get therapeutic now," that's a bad thing, and dangerous.

If you are someone who does ordeals as a sacred service, well, first, I believe that you have to have been there. That's controversial, but for me you have to have been there. Not necessarily the technique that you're doing to them, but the particular flavor of fear and discomfort that goes with it. You're sending someone into a place that's frightening and lonely, and you need to be able to go there and pick them up. At the end of that tunnel, you need to be there with your arms open to receive them, and they have to know that you know that tunnel. I also think that is helps to be horsing a deity, either your patron or a patron of these arts, while you're doing it. It makes you more courageous than you normally would be, and more intelligent about the act.

To do this work properly, you need to be hooked up to a manifestation of the Divine, all the time. Usually underworld or death-dealing deities; that's what they do. You need a clear vision of what you're doing, why you're doing it, what the intended outcome is. Sometimes you need to be willing to take things into your own hands and go beyond what the person thinks that they can manage, so most of the time if it's ritual stuff, they don't get to say stop just because it's intense. If you're going to have this as ritual, then you can't be in control; you'll just have to trust me. If they can't let go, then they're not ready to do the ritual. If they can't trust me, then I'm not the right Ordeal Master for the job.

That's another reason to do ordeal work - it raises a whole lot of power. It's a very potent way of generating raw power. We do ordeals of just pure physical discomfort, or endurance, of fear - dealing with your agoraphobia or fear of heights, confronting the stuff. These can be warrior initiations or they can be power hunts. We do ordeals to raise power, as sacrificial offerings, purifying and atoning ordeals...these are useful when you feel cruddy about something that happened that you didn't have the attainment to prevent, and you can't make it right with the people that were wronged because they're not there, you don't have contact with them, they're dead, and you're feeling like it's a burden that you have to pay for in the ledger, and you haven't had the opportunity to do so.

It can get addictive, if it's done without purpose. There are a lot of endorphin junkies, just going from one to the next, always seeking the next bigger high. The only way out is to improve the education of the community, because that profanes it. It's a biological thing. People have used discomfort and endurance forever for noncorporeal aims.

Wodinic Ordeals
by Galina Krasskova

I led my first Wodinic ordeal in March 2005…completely spontaneously. At the time, I was a member of a local heathen group, and they asked if I’d lead a faining to Freya for some pagan friends, one of whom was being strongly “bothered” by Woden. I agreed, and we all got a strong feeling that there should be a private Woden faining with the man in question, myself (because I belong to Woden), a friend of mine, and her husband who also claimed devotion to Woden. So we set out for the woods.

I’ll preface this by saying that at this point, we were convinced that all Woden wanted was a faining. Neither of us had any inkling of what was to come, and Woden did not share His plans with me. I’ll also say that though I love Woden dearly, I have never, ever experienced Him in the way that He came that night. He dampens the terror with His women, and until that night I never understood why one would flee Him. I never understood what it was Woden’s men go through. I understand it now. I saw and felt and bowed to that terror myself.

But I am getting ahead of myself. We thought this would be quick and simple, but Woden had other plans. As we went into the woods, they darkened and shifted. They changed and Woden’s presence, very dark, was palpable. I told them to stop at a crossroads in the woods, feeling that it was where Woden wanted us to hold the faining. The Woden's man who was with us was an ex-marine, a sniper and a shapeshifter. He (and I witnessed this later that night) is "skin swift"...or let’s just say he’s very close to his wolf fetch. Woden had been courting him for some time.

We stopped at the crossroads and I filled the horn with vodka. I had brought two bottles of Jagermeister for this part of the faining but that did not seem appropriate. They were small and I pocketed them for later, assuming each of the men could give one in offering after the horn was passed. I raised the horn and gave a verbal prayer, speaking of Woden as God of the crossroads, of the dead, hanging God, God of the hunt, etc. Then I sang the spirit song that Woden had given me years ago. Woden would not allow it to come as I wished…and as I sang it, it changed, growing far darker than I had anticipated.

We saw Him in the woods standing by a Tree in the blackness. I offered the horn to my friend's husband, who also gave a prayer to the Old Man. I told him to pass it to Karl, for there are some things a Woden’s man can only receive from another Woden’s man. Woden made it very clear at that moment to both of us without forewarning that He had made us bring our wolf-shifter out there for an initiation. He wanted that man and had watched and honed and selected him very carefully. My friend's husband scribed the valknot over the horn and told the initiate exactly what it would mean (as one Woden’s man to another) for him to drink. The young man paled and asked if he could have a few moments. At our nod, he went off to commune with his wolf fetch (this actually later earned him a compliment from Woden who said that unlike most of His chosen, myself included, this one actually possesses common sense...said with a fairly dry laugh).

The initiate returned after a few minutes and nodded (we had almost been hoping he’d say no), telling us that his wolf told him to do it and had never guided him wrong yet. He drank, and Woden said He wanted the valknot cut into him. I offered to do it, if this was what he wanted. I took the horn and walked towards the direction of where Woden was standing by the trees, knelt, and offered Him the rest of the horn. When we were able, our initiate led us out of that place…only after Woden was no longer visible.

We went back to the house and our wolf went inside, then came out burning up with wod, even though it was a cold night. My friend wisely suggested we throw runes to see if now was a good time to do the valknot, and Gebo came up. This man, who had never met me before that night, said he trusted me to do it, wanted to get it over with and tossed a K-Bar knife down point first into the wooden porch saying, "You’re doing it with this though." (I know better now, but at the time, I just shrugged and said "ok, but you’ll get a better line with a razor blade." )

I told out initiate to make himself ready, and asked my friend if she could draw a valknot freehand (she’s an artist) as I did not trust myself to cut it freehand. What I didn’t know, but should have assumed, is that this man was a berserk. What occurred in his initiation to Woden makes perfect sense. My friend, who had known him for years, told me later that for him, it had to have been bloody, violent and dark.

We went back out into the woods, but as soon as we hit the crossroads they changed, and I realized later that Woden had opened a gate. He’d taken us away from those woods and into a place of the dead, the place where His corpse dangled. It stole the warmth and feeling from us, and for hours after this, it was like we were the walking dead. On the way out, we had to pass by the firepit, and Woden indicated that He wanted ash from the fire smeared into the wound, so we gathered that. Woden chose a small square clearing where Hurricane Hugo had struck down a tree. Our wolf took off his shirt, sat down and wrapped his arms about the stump. Our other Woden's man sat on his legs, pinning him down, and held his arms. (If I ever do this again, we’re binding the berserk in question. Had our wolf had less control, we couldn’t have held him and would never have been able to fend him off. I kept a knife by my side just in case.) Our wolf gagged himself so that he couldn’t bite any of us, and bade us hold him secure. The knife was doused with alcohol, the valknot drawn on his back, and my friend held the light for me. I washed his back with alcohol and Woden told me to bring Him His son. I began to cut while galdring; Woden showed me images and I translated them into the galdr bringing this ulfhednar to the Battle Lord. I do not remember most of the galdr, only that the son passed from the hands of Woden’s bride to Woden Himself. It was the first time that Woden used me as valkyrie, making me an extension of His will directly. Once the valknot was cut, I smeared it with ash.

We had lost our initiate by that point; part of him had begun to change, his soul had gone and he was shifting. Woden had taken him off somewhere. We called him back, which took some time, even though I utilized galdr. He said later that he’d never been able to come back to humanity in so short a time. The presence and energy was extremely strong. My friend, a Freyswoman, backed away and averted her eyes, knowing this was a Wodinic mystery. We wrapped our arms around our wolf, grounding him and calling him back to himself. Eventually he came back, but for the next few hours he was non-verbal, and had recurring muscle spasms throughout his body as he regained full humanity.

Once it was safe, we ungagged him and let him go. On the way out, my friend had wandered a bit ahead and Woden appeared to her—I believe to keep her from wandering farther into the place of the dead where she might be lost. She heard steps, and then the sound of a body swinging from a tree, and had the most sensible response of the night—she stopped and covered her eyes, not wanting to see. By the time I reached her, she was trembling in utter terror, too afraid to go forward or back. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and guided her out. We took our initiate back to the firepit and got him food; my friend was wise enough to bring me food too. I was so cold inside, dead, that I didn’t catch any of the signs of backlash or shock. I figured even though I didn’t feel like it, I should eat and went into the kitchen. The lady of the house was an ex paramedic, and she took one look at me and sat me down, forcing me to eat and ground. It didn’t help. We sat there for hours. Folk would come in, ask what had happened and all we could manage to say was “Woden.” It was a while before anyone would come near us, as the pallor of death was strong about us all. It was hard to get the sound of creaking from a body swinging in the Tree out of our minds.

I wanted to go back to Him. I did what aftercare I could (which in my state wasn’t as much as should have been done) and walked back out into the woods. This is where I received my own lesson in what Woden does to His men. I needed to know this, and had asked a week or so previous that He show me why His men feared Him so. I love Woden dearly, yet I have never, ever experienced such terror as I experienced walking into those woods alone. I got halfway to the crossroads and could go no further. I sensed Him out there, dead… a Woden bereft of even the barest hint of humanity…a walking corpse of a God, a shade, a shadow, hunger and desire, pain and terror bound up as one. I longed for Him and I was, for the first time, shown the full measure of terror He inspires. I could not go further. I bowed my head and covered my eyes. I wanted to go in, but also knew to my bones that if I did, I wouldn’t be coming out again. I’d seen Him as Lord of the Dead before, but never in that place, never after having walked between realms in a place that sucked the humanity and life from me.

I returned just as the lady of the house was about to come out to find me. She had managed to get the spasms stopped in our initiate, and he gave me shild for the cutting. Woden had told him he had to pay. First he offered me the bloody rags, saying that his blood was the most precious thing he had, but I refused them and told him that those belonged to Woden. Instead, at Woden’s urging, I took three rounds for his rifle. If one knew him, one realized this was a powerful payment in itself, as he had ensorcelled his gun as an ally. He asked me how to honor Woden; we spoke on that for a bit and I assured him Woden would teach him what he needed to know. We all debriefed each other as best we could.

We found out the next morning that all the trees at that crossroads were felled in a circle by Woden that night.

My own first ordeal I will speak of only in brief. I had been elfshot a couple of years ago by a crazy (but gifted) ex-student with serious mother and authority issues. It was causing me ever-increasing pain and essentially crippling me. It cut off my ability to ground and not only damaged my back, but left me constantly exhausted and often ill. It was brilliant work (I'll give credit where credit is due, the girl was one of the most talented students I ever had) and nothing I did was able to undo it. I'd get some relief, but the way it was worked on me, it spread too rapidly and in too complex a fractal like pattern to counter. It also cut off my ability to function effectively as a spiritworker and blocked me off enough that it impaired my perception of my relationship with Woden, and that was worse than the physical pain.

When I attended a shaman gathering last autumn, there were several ordeal masters present. Woden had indicated that if I worked four sigils into my skin, it would destroy the shot. I mentioned that I had been wanting to get them cut but didn't know anyone who did that (not knowing that two of the people I spoke with were specifically trained in cutting and ordeal work). One woman offered to cut them into me that night if I would consent to allow her to copy the sigils. She'd been told she needed protection against elfshot and would find it at the gathering. So that was a nice bit of synchronicity.

That night, around the bonfire, with at least a dozen mystics, shamans, spiritworkers, healers, God-spouses, and God-slaves present, I had the senior shaman drum while several others chanted. I bared my back, straddled a chair and allowed one of them to restrain my arms. I began to chant and pray to Woden, offering this to Him partly in cleansing and partly to reaffirm my devotion to Him. He was so present.....

I'd never been cut like that before and doubted my ability to stand the pain, but I was soon pretty tranced from the chanting and drumming and general collected maegen of the group. I can't say it was pleasant when the cutting began, but the sight and sense of the elfshot leaving me was palpable. Woden came into me at one point and began to laugh as He did something that sent it all back to the nithling that injured me in the first place. He left me but hovered and I remained silent until the very end when I was told to galdr, which I did. Once the cuttings were done, hot ash was rubbed into the wound and I was allowed to get up, though watched carefully for a time lest I pass out or get grabbed by Woden again. The physical difference was palpable, the way I moved having changed completely. While there was residual tissue damage from the shot (which yes, appears in medical scans), the shot itself was gone and I was cleaned and free of the taint.

I’ve also had Woden request that I get several tattoos. He utilizes them to effect astral and spiritual modifications. While not as dramatic an ordeal as those described above, in terms of impact they were quite effective. I have a prayer to Woden, of binding, around my left wrist, a valknot on my left arm, between my breasts, other runic sigils down my back and on my right arm with more to come. In terms of sheer physical discomfort, many were more painful than the cutting. Woden has also insisted I learn to better facilitate ordeal rites and to that end has sent me for training in cutting and more recently, branding. His words on the matter were simple: I cannot take someone across a threshold I myself have not crossed.

Each world has People who embody the Powers of Death, and thus are the Ordeal-Givers for that world. Some spirit-workers have been called to do nine ordeals, working their way up or down the Tree and learning the wisdom therein. Generally, if they work for one of the Aesir or Vanir, they start at the bottom and work their way up (Helheim, Niflheim, Svartalfheim, Muspellheim, Midgard, Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Ljossalfheim, Asgard), while if they serve Rokkr gods they do it in the other direction, working downwards from the top.

Starting at the bottom, the Ordeal-Giver for Helheim is, of course, Hela. Her ordeals are almost always not only physically painful, but involve a good deal of fear as well. Terror is one way for her to get people opened up (Odin is not averse to using that trip either, on his end), especially if it is a sheer fear of Death. The hallmark of Hela's ordeals is the moment of "Oh, no, I'm going to be killed now," or "I can't take any more of this or I'll die." This can be achieved in any number of ways without actually seriously endangering the bodily life of the ordeal-dancer, but that moment must still be felt sincerely. If she does not choose to use Fear, another of her methods is Humiliation, which is more often used on those with too much pride or arrogance. In the face of Death, pride and arrogance have no place, and she is good at driving this point home. Generally, a Helheim ordeal will push you past your limits and bring to face to face with some aspect of your physical mortality, whatever that might be for you. Hela has no one technique that is specific to her; she is a Mistress of all of them.

For Niflheim, the Ordeal-Giver is usually Nidhogg the great dragon, but it can also be one of the frost-thurses who live in that icy, misty world. For the latter, you must have a good relationship with the frost-thurses; most people who end up with a Niflheim ordeal face the Dragon in one way or another. (For the record, while Niflheim is technically the prison of Fenrir, he does not perform ordeals there. He does not do anything there except be imprisoned; a small part of him can move between the worlds and work with people there, but there is nowhere in the Nine Worlds that he can freely go.) Niflheim ordeals are often about cold, perhaps cold water - one is reminded of the legendary Siberian shaman trick of punching six holes in the ice, jumping into the first one, coming up out of the second one, and weaving in this way down the line. While most modern shamans would not be up to such a feat, a cold ordeal can be a good test of the spirit-worker's ability to warm themselves. It might be standing naked in the snow for a time, or walking briefly into icy water. As with all such things, a balance must be struck between coddling one's self to the point of the ritual failing to be an ordeal, and lacking the common sense to avoid lethality.

Niflheim is also associated with rot, as is Nidhogg who is the Eater of Corpses. Rot can be an ordeal, if for example the individual is made to lie next to an unattractive rotting animal corpse and meditate on it, while enduring the smell. While this may seem like a useless exercise in suffering, those who are death-phobic can sometimes benefit from this reminder that all parts of the cycle are sacred, including that little-loved part. They can also get over their phobias about ugliness and decomposition in this way.

For Svartalfheim, the Ordeal-Givers are not any of the Duergar - they are actually the creative force for that world. Instead, that lies in the hands of the Dark Alfar, and one must present one's self to one of their Queens. Svartalfheim ordeals often seem to involve broken glass of some sort, perhaps shards of broken mirrors. The Dark Alfar love to break beautiful objects, and they are equally fond of small sharp knives. One can usually guarantee that this world's ordeal is going to involve some kind of cutting, perhaps with broken glass, or if that is too dangerous, razors or scalpels. Blood should be wiped on the bark of trees, and singing out the pain is an important skill to know, as they are all about song-magic.

In Muspellheim, the Ordeal-Giver is Surt, the lord of the fire-etins and the oldest being in the Nine Worlds. Muspellheim ordeals, of course, involve heat. The classic one might be a brand, although long saunas, firewalking, or other heat rituals have been done as well. Another Muspellheim ordeal might be endurance-dancing, ideally around a fire, as fire-etins do a lot of sacred dance. (See the Path of Rhythm chapter for more information on that.)

In Jotunheim, there are several Jotunfolk whose specialty is pain, but the most respected is probably Angrboda, the Hag of the Iron Wood. She specializes in the "hunting for power" type of ordeals, where the receiver pits themselves against suffering in order to gauge their own strength and see what they can survive. Angrboda is the trainer of young warriors, especially those with animal sides or anger management issues; one of her favorite sorts of trials are "hazing"-style self-control rites which triggers rage in someone in a situation where rage will only cause them more pain, and only by mastering themselves can they win. Other sorts of Jotunheim ordeals might involve being hunted through the woods as prey, or anything involving serious mountain-climbing.

In Vanaheim, it varies depending on whether the focus is earth or sea - and all rites in Vanaheim will have one of those two focuses. Most Vanaheim rites are done with the element of Earth, and the Ordeal-Giver is Nerthus the Earth Mother of the Vanir, whose face is always veiled because to see it would be death. In ancient times, the statue of Nerthus was taken out and bathed every year, and this necessitated the deaths of several slaves who got to see her close up. Nerthus is the embodiment of the devouring Earth, and her ordeals can include being buried in the ground, or placed into a hole to keep vigil. There is also the full-on John Barleycorn-type ordeal, done in honor of Frey, where the individual is treated as the grain is - scythed down with a cutting, bound like a sheaf, beaten in a way that mimics threshing and milling, placed in a circle of fire to mimic baking, and then reburied in the earth to represent the seed that is planted anew. (The full text of an example of such a rite can be found in Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM And The Ordeal Path by Asphodel Press.)

If the focus is the ocean, then the Ordeal-Givers are Ran and her nine daughters. (Aegir prefers to let his bloodthirsty wife do these things for him, and Njord is a life-bearer.) Their ordeals may vary depending on which undine-goddess shows up, but generally must take place in the ocean. All blood shed into the ocean's waves by one of us goes to them as an offering. One such ordeal had the individual in question tied onto a safety rope line which was held by people on the shore, and he went out and battled the undertow as long as he could, "dancing with the Sisters" as he put it.

In Ljossalfheim, the Ordeal-Givers are specific Alf-lords, but they do not advertise their nature. If you want to make an appointment with them, the person to approach is Gerda, Frey's giantess wife; if she could be said to have friends among the Alfar, it would be them, and they trust her to screen out the unworthy. One of their favorite ordeals is imprisoning someone in total isolation for a time, perhaps in the woods or field; they strongly value mental and emotional connections, so taking someone away from that is serious for them. This might start out similarly to the quiet contemplation of the Ascetic Path, but what makes it an ordeal is that it goes beyond the person's ability to handle it well, and takes them through stages of difficult emotion caused by long-term isolation. Part of this type of rite might be taking away their name, or their identity, and then giving it back when the ordeal is over. If a mark is placed on them as part of the ordeal, be sure that it will be aesthetically beautiful, or at least constructed skillfully for a particular aesthetic effect, as will the setting of the ordeal itself.

The most serious ordeal that the Alfar (or any fey-type race) might inflict on someone is to curse them with madness for a time, and see how they handle it. This might seem like setting someone up to fail - taking away their reason and expecting them to somehow come through - but madness can strip away much of a person's identity and show them parts of themselves that have been repressed. This, obviously is not an ordeal that can be inflicted for a few hours by a human agent, unless they use the Sacred Plants, and that is a very dangerous road. Instead, this kind of ordeal will likely be between the Alfar and the human in question themselves, and may or may not be announced as a specific ordeal - that may be something that the human has to figure out for themselves, which is not so easy during a bout of madness.

In Asgard, the Ordeal-Giver is, of course, Odin. Like Hela, he might select any sort of ordeals to inflict on the individual, although he is fond of suspensions and indeed anything involving hanging, and people getting runes carved or tattooed on them, and anything that honors the various parts of his nine-year ordeal. (The Rite of Odin follows in this chapter.) Asgard ordeals are often rites for warriors; their focus varies depending on whether they are the start or the finish of a series of ordeals, or a single one on their own. Starting in Asgard is generally an ordeal of courage, whereas finishing there is often an ordeal of honor, as it is assumed that after eight other ordeals, courage has already been adequately built up.

The one ordeal that catches most people up is Midgard. There is no one patron for the Midgard ordeal except the spirit-worker themselves, and any local spirits of earth and animal and plant who offer to aid them. The ordeal must be entirely self-designed, and usually not physical - Midgard rites deal with the demons of daily life that plague us, and that hold us back from our other work, and they are best approached with a more psychological sort of suffering. The Gods watch these ordeals as closely as they watch other ones, but they do not interfere. The test is to create a ritual for yourself that honestly triggers your deepest issues and doesn't spare you at all, nor engage in any denial. I've seen many elaborate and painful rites created by people doing this sort of thing which look terribly self-sacrificing on the surface, but don't actually touch the person's deeper problems.

To start planning for a Midgard rite, I've found that it's best to have friends who know you well tell you about what they see of your issues. As they tell you these things, watch for a particular feeling. It's a flicker of panic, an "Oh, no, not that!" after which you immediately find your attention being forcibly shoved away from it. Don't let that happen. Jump on it and look at it. If it makes you feel even more panicked - and the panic voice can disguise itself, by saying "Oh, no, I don't think that I need to do that" - that's good. It shouldn't be something that you can get comfortable with before you start the rite. You should be feeling some shadow of that "Oh, Gods, no, not this" all the way up to the starting line. That's how you know that you've gotten it right. It may actually seem silly and unglamourous, and that's good. Midgard is unglamourous. That's part of its nature. Often, it's not something that one clearly fears so much as something that one dislikes intensely, for reasons mysterious to one's self. Often that dislike, when fully unearthed, leads back to a fear.

One of the themes that I've seen in Midgard ordeals is bringing people back to an appreciation of their humanity. Working with spirits, and doing heavy magic, can change people. It can set them apart from other people, and isolate them. As discussed elsewhere in this series, sometimes this alienation is part of the package, part of the power. However, when the spirit-worker gets set too far apart, they lose touch with the very people that they are supposed to be serving. There's also that spirit-workers are not immune to loneliness, bitterness, and anger and the unfairness of their situation, and this can lead to contempt for the folk that they are bound to serve. It can also lead to contempt for the parts of them that are flawed and human just like Everybody Else. It's never possible to adequately serve people for whom you have contempt, especially when there are spiritual questions involved. Midgard ordeals often bring people face to face with those parts of them that they still share with Joe Blow sitting in front of his television set watching sitcoms, and teach them tolerance for those parts, and by extension tolerance for their Tribe, even if that Tribe is anyone who might show up at the door.

My advice for the spirit-worker who is attempting to plan a Midgard ordeal and having trouble with it is to find someone who is basically a decent human being, but embodies everything that you associate with the short-sightedness, mundanity, and general ordinariness that you believe that your job or viewpoint has placed you above. Go to them and offer to help them with something, and in the process spend enough time with them to find something that you have in common, especially if it's something unflattering. Make that the starting-place for planning your ordeal.

The most important thing to remember with ordeal-work is that it is meant to take you beyond your ego, not simply fluff it up. While some ordeals can give you increased confidence in yourself and your power, if there wasn't a point somewhere in it that was completely humbling, you didn't do it right. Ideally, you should eventually get to the point where the part of you that is ego is irrelevant. That's one of the way that the Ordeal Path resembles the Ascetic Path (and indeed there are places where they combine). The Ascetic's Path works with small, gentle, inexorable steps, and its focus goes inward into stillness, while the Ordeal Path takes great painful ripping steps, and its focus goes outward into a scream...after which one passes out of one's collected muck and finds a place of stillness. In the end, the Wheel of these Eight Paths all lead to the central hub, that place that we may not be able to adequately describe in words, but we all know when we've been to it.

Raven Kaldera
cauldronfarm@hotmail.com

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