Mastering Water: The Nine Undines

As part of my northern-tradition shamanic training, I am required to master the elements. By "master", as I explained in my article on mastering elements, I do not mean waving my oh-so-wizardly arms and commanding the forces of nature to do my bidding. Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen. In this case, "mastery" is less about mastering a slave and more about mastering the violin...it means that one has a reasonably thorough understanding of the element, and can work with its energies magically in a competent way.

In the past several years, I've managed to do Air (pretty well) and Fire (barely), and I am making long slow progress with Earth. It actually seems appropriate that it is long and slow. However, I hadn't even begun to touch Water. It is my weakest point. I had no idea where even to begin. I got the feeling that there was some cosmic glaring going on in my direction at my procrastination, and so I asked for help. Help, please. Someone, anyone, show me where to go with this.

I realize that Water takes many forms, and that for some people, such asking might be answered by the spirits of lakes and rivers and streams, of fresh water. Perhaps their lessons might even be different. (I would also strongly point out that this is just as valid and useful a way of learning about Water.) However, for me it apparently had to be the sea. I have always been drawn to the ocean, and I am incapable of living more than two hours from the coast. When the call was answered, it was the Nine Waves, the nine daughters of the sea god and goddess Aegir and Ran, who answered.

I was told that they would not come to me; that I would have to come to them. I was told that I would have to make nine separate appointments at nine separate beaches, and that they would not wait very long, so it had better be scheduled soon. I printed out a map of the New England coastline and pendulum-dowsed over it, marking out the places where the pendulum went crazy. Then I enlarged the map - thank goodness for online map programs! - and discovered that they were in fact beach points, many of which I'd never heard of.

I went to the first beach with my wife Bella - she'd heard that it was Monomoy Island and wanted to come with me and fish - and then did the other eight a month later, in one long six-day marathon that nearly blew my head apart with the intensity of one lesson after another, one spirit after another moving through my brain and body....and I ended up with nine important pieces of understanding about the nature of Water, and nine power songs that I have chronicled here.

The thing that stands out to me, in the after-period when I try to put words to what I've learned, is that so many modern elemental-magic systems emphasize water as the kindest, most loving, and even most passive element. Water is healing and flowing and yielding and all that, right? The lessons that the Nine Ladies taught me were quite the opposite. They were the embodiment of the Great Water, not the small water that we separate out for our own uses, that we make safe. They were the sea that eats people, the water that drowns you, dashes you against the rocks, takes you down. They were Water with Attitude. We tell each other our pretty little fantasy stories about how lovely Water is, but the deep truth is that when there is enough of it in one place, it is every bit as dangerous as fire, and perhaps more so. Each of the Nine Ladies had that quality of danger about her, whether up-front and obvious or more subtle. They all had teeth and claws. Behind the lesson of what they were trying to teach me was another, more pervasive message. I could eat you. If I wanted to, I could drag you down and take your life, not out of malice, but because it is in my nature to do that. Ocean's embrace of us always intends to be fatal, whether we slip through her fingers or not.

This was underlined by my problems with finding the proper offerings. I tried to give them home-brewed beer or mead, in little bread bowls that I'd handcrafted myself, but they didn't want that. What they wanted was blood. I discovered this accidentally with the first visitation, and afterwards I went to the ocean with a bag of diabetic stickers and gave each of them (except Hevring) a few drops of blood. I don't know whether it was the salt water or their good wishes, but the pricks on my fingers were fully healed and invisible in a matter of hours after I shed each offering.

One note on the power songs: I asked the Nine Ladies whether these were for public consumption and could be used by people other than myself. While they didn't seem to mind the idea, they emphasized that the songs were a gift from Them, and in order for them to work for someone else, that person would have to go out and make offerings to Them, to form some kind of a relationship with Them. These are to be used only with their express permission. I do not know if this will mean driving to the coast and talking to them in person (which I realize would be more difficult for people living inland) or if they will be satisfied with some other form of contact. That's up to you and them. I'll try to put recordings of the songs up soon.

• Blodughadda
• Himinglava
• Hronn
• Hevring
• Bylgja
• Unn
• Duva
• Kolga
• Bara

May 30, 2005: Monomoy Island

Blodughadda

We were the only people going out besides the serious hip-wader-clad fishermen, and they all wanted to go to the mud flats where the fishing was better. We told the ferryman that we just wanted to be dropped off on a private stretch of beach, and picked up 4 hours later. He cooperatively marooned us on a lovely shore flanked by flocks of nesting birds, me with my crane bag and large wicker trash can with straps in which I carry my water drum, and Bella with painting equipment. She did watercolors and fished while I did what I had to do.

I had made an offering bowl out of rye bread dough the night before, and I filled it with local-brew ale and placed it on the beach, right where the tide was coming in. I got the idea that this wasn't enough of an offering, but I wasn't sure what to do. Whoever she was, she was holding back. Messing further with the bottle cap from the ale, I accidentally gashed my knuckles and bloodied the bowl of beer, and bam! She was there. Crawling up from the surf, the ugliest mermaid I'd ever seen. Not that I'd actually seen any real ones before, of course.

She looked nothing like any mermaid pictured in fairytale books. It brought home to me that Aegir and his clan were sea-etins, not some sort of faery or elf. She would have been tall if she had been standing upright instead of wriggling up in the surf, and was powerfully built in the shoulders, less like a slender girl and more like an Olympic swimmer. Her breasts were long, hanging dugs, under necklaces of teeth and fishbone. She had a fishtail, but it looked like that of a shark, with a fin protruding between her shoulder blades. She had very long hair, the dark rusty red of dried blood, that swirled around her in the water like seaweed. Her face was broad and rather flat, with a very wide mouth that was full of rows of sharp pointed teeth, and it gave her a grin like a manticore. Her eyes were the steel-grey of the foggy sea behind us, and shifted exactly with its coloration the entire time that she was there. The pupils were slitted. "Come here," she purred, "and let me clean the blood off your fingers for you."

I wasn't quite that brave, but I held my hand in the seawater and let the red stain float over to where she lowered her face and lapped at it. Her tongue was bluish-purple in the grey surf. She moved from the blood to the ale, drank it, and ate the bowl in three bites. Her fingers were clawed. Her hips wriggled as she moved in the shallow water, and I could only stare stupidly. I swallowed and retreated back to where my drum stood in the sand, and asked politely what she would deign to teach me.

She laughed at me, and told me to find my pulse with my fingers, and then follow it with the drumbeat. The rest of the interaction was not as interesting from a personal standpoint; I spent the whole time trying to concentrate on what she was telling me to do. She gave me a power song, or rather she put something in my head and the drumbeat that allowed a power song to come to me. She told me that there would be a very important thing just around the curve of the shore that I must take home, something that would be incorporated into a fetish for me, that I would know it when I saw it. I was thinking it would be a seashell, but when I rounded the curve there were a gazillion horseshoe crabs mating in the surf. One of them had been eaten by seagulls and the cleaned-out shell was laying on the sand; I knew immediately that I should take it home.

For all that she was clearly a salt-water creature, I gathered from what she told me that she was about the sea's relationship to the rivers that emptied into it. As such, she was also about blood, which are the rivers of your body, and empty into the heart which is its ocean. Each of the other Nine Ladies would also be about the sea's relationship to something, although sometimes that was vague and subtle.

Blodughadda's Lesson:

The rivers talk to the sea, you know. They trickle on down, or they come crashing back like a lover coming home, and they tell us tales....about the overhanging trees, the rounded stones, the dappled sunlight, the deep roots under mountains, the pale spear-lined caves. We know all about the world wherever water goes, because it eventually all comes back to us. No matter how far away it flows, we get it back in the end. All the rivers are our errant lovers.

Listen to the blood in your veins. It is your inner ocean. Your blood is very like seawater in its consistency, its salts, its proteins. Yes, yes, you say you know this, but it is much, much more than symbolism. It means that you have the power of the ocean within you, all the time, and you can call upon its power at need with the taste of your blood. You want to learn to use the power of Ocean? First you learn to control the ocean inside.

Find your pulse. Listen to it, get its rhythm. Make the drum match it. A water drum must always first be aligned with the rhythm of your pulse before you do anything else with it. Eventually, you will be able to align it with the pulse of others, when a healing is to be done, but right now you focus on your own. Follow it with the drumbeat, and then see if you can change the drumbeat slightly and drag your pulse along with it. No, don't try to alter your breathing. This is not about air and breath. This is about changing the flow itself, changing the pulse of the riverbanks within you as they flow to and from the ocean of your heart.

You can't get that right, you can't control your blood flow that easily? Of course you can't. Did you think that you would get it right, the first time out? You need to practice this, day after day. Find the rhythm and change the flow. Use the power song that is coming to you. Unlock its clues, use it in all the ways you will figure out. The ocean is enormous. With your eyes closed, and an awareness of your body, of all the rivers of seawater inside you, you realize how huge they are as well. When you can chase down your pulse and lock it to the drumbeat, and then take the throb of your inner tides with you, then you can start to think about the water outside your veins.

Blodughadda's Song

Root of the willow, drink from the riverside lee,
Root of the willow, drink from the riverside lee,
The river runs on till it opens into the sea.

Fruit of the hawthorn, curb the scarlet flow,
Fruit of the hawthorn, curb the scarlet flow,
The tide rushes in and the tide goes out so slow.

Red stain spreads as the ocean's song I sing,
Red stain spreads as the ocean's song I sing,
Blood in the water make my offering.

Silt from the riverbank, wash to the sea and then
Silt from the riverbank, wash to the sea and then
Feed the blood-haired maiden once again.

I am the river and I am the endless sea,
I am the river and I am the endless sea,
The rivers flow out and then return to me.

Herring Cove Beach, Cape Cod: June 2005

Himinglava

We left home with the weather warning throbbing in our ears: an entire solid week of rain. I wondered if I ought to cancel and postpone, but it was the only week that my boyfriend and assistant Joshua was able to get off from work, so I forged ahead anyway. Yet when we got to Herring Cove Beach, the very tip of Cape Cod and the furthest east one could get in this state, it was beautiful. The sun had been hot throughout the entire drive, and by evening when we arrived it was cooler, but still gorgeous. The sea was as warm as it ever got, and the glasslike waves sparkled in the sun.

This time, I knew better about what gift to give. I sat on the sand and drummed and sang to call her - I sang Rudyard Kipling's "Harp Song of the Dane Women", which made reference to her mother, in the hopes that she would like it. When I felt her presence, I had Josh prick my finger, and I walked into the waves with my offering.

Himinglava is the youngest and prettiest of the sisters. I knew it was her as soon as I saw her, as would be the case with each of them, even though I would have no idea which sister I would be facing until she arrived. She was long and slender and graceful with long curly hair of a chestnut-orange that glowed coppery under the perfect green-glass waves. Her eyes were just like Blodughadda's, the same color of the sea behind them and changing with that water as she moved. She had teeth, though, and claws, and those strangely inhuman features - the wide face and mouth, the wide-set eyes. She giggled, but I had no delusions that she was harmless. She flipped out of the water and turned back in, and I saw that her lower half was a dolphin's tail.

She is the fair-weather goddess, which means exactly what it says. She is fickle, and the worst wound that she can give some poor seafarer is to desert him completely just when he thought that everything was clear sailing...and leave him to the tender mercies of her sisters. She can arrive just as suddenly, in the wake of a storm, bringing a calm sea and an ironically bright sun to gleam on the wreckage. She is about the sea's relationship to the sun, and although she is the youngest sister, her eyes see back to the very beginning, when the sun's rays reached down through the water and stimulated life.

Himinglava's Lesson:

Under the water, the sun is not like it is in the air. It is a faint light, fainter the deeper you go, that gives life yet may come or go without warning. If you chase it to the surface, suddenly you're in the air...and most of what lives down here cannot live up there. So if you break through to bask in the sun, it can kill you. Even if you're of the kind who can breathe beyond the barrier, you can't jump high enough to get to it, and it will always be beyond your reach. Not to mention that too much exposure can burn you.

That's what joy is about. There are places where it's dark, and there is no joy, and life grows up there anyway without light...because they make their own light. Where there is no sun, you have to make it yourself. The sun comes and goes overhead, and you can only see it from afar, and that's a good thing because to get to that much joy would destroy you. The waters of your being protect you from that ecstasy, because there's a part of you that would risk self-immolation for it, and something has to hold it back.

Joy is a gift, and so it is never deserved or undeserved. It comes because the Universe feels generous. To go on about whether or not you deserve joy...that's foolish. It will come and it will go, and it is not controlled by your merits or follies. You be glad when it comes, and when it goes you know it'll be back eventually, and that's all. And if you find yourself in the dark place where it never shines....make your own light. See those sparkles on the water? Cup your hands and hold them, What, you think they're just tricks of the light, you can't hold them? Of course you can. Now bring them into yourself, up your fingers and into your arms. When you sing this song I'm giving you, release some of them into the air, or better yet, onto salt water.

This song will bring fair weather and disperse darkness, whether it's the sky or your head, but it won't last, because it never does. Don't curse it when it goes away. Let it fly, so that it will want to come back to you. Release the sun to the western horizon, and it will reappear the next morning. But if you're watching where it went, with nostalgia and regret, you'll have your back to where it comes up, and you'll miss it. So always be watching for it in someplace opposite to where you saw it last. Remember that.

Himinglava's Song

Green as glass and green as glass, the sun shines through the wave,
A window on the sea to see the light in the deepest cave.
The weed leaps wanton 'neath the wave like the maiden's chestnut mane,
For sun and sea and song the spell from which all life once came,
And I bid this darkness to depart in Himinglava's name.

Blue as glass and blue as glass, the shining waters flow.
I catch the silver sparks that glint on endless indigo.
Fair weather maiden's touch a feather's softly falling flight,
The clouds disperse and fly before the sun's eternal might,
And I bid this darkness to depart in Himinglava's sight.

Sandy Neck Beach, Cape Cod: June 2005

Hronn

The good weather didn't hold, as was expected. The next morning it was raining and cold - Himinglava was clearly nowhere to be found today - and we trucked down to Sandy Neck...named, I expect, for the narrow strip of sand at the top of the beach. The rest of the beach was composed entirely of pebbles, down into the water. The place was completely deserted, and I had to wonder if the rain was engineered for the privacy of the mermaids. Joshua set up the fly with poles in the front, weighted by rocks in the back, a fabric lean-to with a floor-tarp and blanket underneath. I drummed and sang for a while, figuring that it was too cold for swimming and I would just get my lesson up here in shelter....but it was clear, after a while, that I was going to have to go it. I had Josh prick my finger and I stripped and walked in naked.

She was there, coming toward me in the water with a strange wriggling motion, and there was fear in the pit of my belly. I was more scared of this one than even of bloodthirsty Blodughadda. She swam in a circle around me - I was chest-deep by then - and surfaced, and I stared into a round mouth full of bared teeth. Her face was more pinched and her eyes more bulging, and her fair hair was cut short and flapping about her inhuman face. The eyes, they were the same. I was getting used to the eyes.

Her touch was slimy as she slapped lightly at me with her clawed hands, and her tail whipped back and forth in the water beneath her, a tapering spotted line. If Blodughadda had been shark and Himinglava dolphin, Hronn was eel. "Are you frightened of me?" she asked. "Good. You should be. I'm the whirlpool, I could suck you right down to the bottom of the ocean." I felt the waves around me take on a rougher rhythm, grabbing me around the waist and pushing me about. "You think you know all about fear just because you've died once? Don't be a fool. You're not done with it yet."

Hronn is Lady of the Whirlpool. Like her twin sister Hevring, she is a mistress of currents, but Hronn is mistress of the currents that suck you down into the water, rather than those that carry you horizontally across it. She seems to be connected also to the life of the deep sea bottom, especially the black waters where we cannot go and still live except with technological equipment.

Hronn's Lesson:

All those warriors, they talk about fighting fear, as if it was some opponent that could be slaughtered. When you fight fear and win - or when you think that you've won, anyway - all it means is that you fought your way clear of the whirlpool...this time. The whirlpool is still there, waiting for you. That's escaping, not winning. To win, you have to go all the way down, all the way in. You have to go down to the center of it, to face the worst of it. The situation is terrifying? What's the worst that could happen? Can you imagine it? Now go there. Go there in a way that you can't just walk out of when the game gets too scary.

That means that just imagining it isn't enough, although it's a puny start. You need to do it, or do something like it. You need to feel it in your body, to force yourself to take those steps forward, to touch something. You need to walk into that fear with your flesh, making a mark on that flesh that you will always recall, with heart-wrenching physicality, every time you think about it. You remember, don't you? You remember how you lost the fears that you lost, how you came that close to Death? You remember Her Ladyship's bony knuckles clicking on your ribcage as She tore out your heart. You can recall that sensation, sharp as a convulsion, every time you think of it. That recall is a scar, a mark, a brand laid on you as a passport through that fear. Every deep fear requires such a mark, but it must be one that drives you on when you touch it, not one that paralyzes you. If it paralyzes you, you did it wrong, and you must rip it open and go into the maelstrom again, all the way to the bottom of the whirlpool.

That's the secret. You walk and keep walking, you keep going all the way to the bottom, and then you come out the other side. It really is that simple. It really is that difficult. And nothing else will ever do. If you sing this song, and sing it and sing it, while you're going there, it will carry you. It won't give you courage - you have to do that yourself - but it will create the current that pulls you through even without courage.

Hronn's Song

By the cold grey waters
I draw you in.
By the pulse of your blood
I draw you in.
To the eye of the storm,
I draw you in.
To the fathomless deeps
I draw you in.
Sharp the wet stones,
I draw you in.
Chill my grey mantle,
I draw you in.
Sea takes your breath,
I draw you in.
Sea chokes your words,
I draw you in.
Sea kills your song,
I draw you in.
Silence your doom,
I draw you in.
Find you again,
I draw you in.
Find you again,
I draw you in.
Find me here
I let you go.

York Beach, Maine: June 2005

Hevring

We arrived in York in the evening and checked into the campground, and then ate dinner. I knew that I was supposed to be on the beach after dark, not during daylight hours. York is a well-touristed public beach, so I figured it was just as well. As it was, there were a few packs of children playing with a dog in the moonlit surf. The dog ran up to me while I was doing my introductory drumming and sniffed me. I turned my head and told him quietly that I was calling a dangerous mermaid, and that if he didn't stay away, she might eat him. He took off immediately, and didn't bother me again.

When I was done calling, I sensed Hevring in the surf. Far, far out in the surf. I walked out up to my chest, and was still several yards away, but I got the feeling that she didn't want me any nearer, so I stayed where I was. Her voice, her lesson, carried to me over the wind.

She never actually came close to me, and I never saw more than her head and shoulders and upper torso. Her hair was long and jet-black, and cast forward over her face so that I couldn't really make out her features. The darkness added to that; she was just a shape poised there in the water. I felt that if I cast out further, she would retreat. Her skin was pale, and she seemed to be wearing some garment made of white strands that flowed out in all directions from her shoulders like a cape of string. It took me a while to realize that she was actually wearing a giant jellyfish as a garment, and its tentacles extended in all directions. About that time, I realized also that she was sobbing.

Hevring is sorrow, but she is not pretty sorrow - the pale trembling lip, the trickling tear, the bravely-borne look of sadness. She is weeping, screaming, ranting sorrow. She is wailing, undignified, consuming despair. These days we don't like to overplay our sorrow for the public, because we feel vaguely guilty about shoving it in the faces of people who have no reason to care. We forget that once people screamed and wept and rent their clothes at funerals, that they even hired mourners to play that part of fully-loosed grieving. Hevring was the only one of the sisters who didn't want my blood. She wanted my tears, freely given to the ocean.

In spite of this, Hevring is important to sailors, because she is the mistress of the wave-current, the up-and-down of the surface of the ocean. If you can placate Hevring, she will turn the surface currents and take you where you want to go. Placating her involves shedding your tears into seawater, and not fake tears either. You must weep for a real grief. If you have no grief in your life worth weeping over, she considers you shallow and not worth her attention.

Hevring's Lesson

How dare you be ashamed of grief? Grief is one of the currents of life. Without grieving, there is no depth. We forget things and they go away as if they never were. We cannot truly remember our losses with love and respect until we have mourned them properly and completely. Mourning is not something that you rush through, hoping that it will soon be over. If you do not go through it completely, immersively, it will be unfinished and it will linger in you, making poison. You will not be able to remember your loss cleanly, you will turn your mind away from it, and it will be yet another blind spot in your vision.

You must abandon yourself to grieving, wholly and completely, and trust that there will come a time when it is entirely done. Remember that while grieving, you are strong. You are less likely to be swept away by the needs of others. You can get close to your own center, your own needs, when you are grieving. This song will walk you through that time, though it will not take you any faster than it ought to be done.

Hevring's Song

Heartbeat, feel my heartbeat, like the turning of the tide;
Pulsebeat, feel my pulsebeat, like the salt wind in my eyes.
Heartstrung, I am weeping, I am tatters, rent and torn;
Soul-pierced, I am dying, but somehow I still live on.

Ai, in our grieving, in our sorrow,
We are stronger than we've ever been and
Ai, as the storms rise, there is no compromise
Any longer nor ever again.

Flying, I am floating, I am ashes on the wave;
Crying, I am wildness, like the wind I rail and rave.
Poised here in the moment, there is nothing left to choose;
Bleeding, I see clearly, I have nothing left to lose.

Ai, in our grieving, in our sorrow,
We are stronger than we've ever been and
Ai, as the storms rise, there is no compromise
Any longer nor ever again.

Fortune's Rocks Beach, Maine, July 2005

Bylgja

Fortune's Rocks Beach was lined with rugosa roses and elderflowers, and the sea was inviting in spite of the grey weather. The few folk taking walks on the shore quickly left, leaving it empty, and I sang my calling song and went straight into the water. I sensed that this sister was of a different temperament from vicious Hronn and anguished Hevring, and I was grateful.

The first thing that I noticed as I went into the sea-green white-foam-lace waves was their height - it was a rough, wild day for the sea. The second thing was that there were faces of white horses in the waves, and then their forelegs as they reared up. They pounded toward the shore, and then I was surrounded by thundering wave-horses. Among them, with a shriek of gaiety, was a mermaid diving through the water, coming past me. She spun somehow in the surf and then was off again, swimming with the tide. The water blurred her form and I couldn't tell if she was riding one of the wave-horses, playing with it, or shifting her shape back and forth to become one. I did, however, get the strong feeling that they were an illusion that she had created herself out of sheer fun.

She paused long enough to acknowledge me, and then insisted that I play with her in the water, jumping the waves. I've done this game before. It requires that you let the wave come at you, and then you jump just before it crests and let its peak pass you and break behind you. If you misjudge the time to jump, the breaking wave catches you and dashes you to the shore, grinding your face into the sand. I managed to get it right about two times out of three.

Bylgja is plump and round, like a seal, and indeed the seal is one of her animals, as are sea otters and the mythical wave-horse. Her hair is seal-brown and velvety-looking, and her round breasts are good-sized as well, contrasting with flap-breasted Hronn and skinny Hevring. Coral bits hung around her neck, from her ears, and were wound through her hair. Her eyes were currently as sea-green as the glassy waves behind her, but they were the same eyes as her sisters.

She is the Lady of the Breaker, and while she was in a good mood when I saw her, she is the one who decides when and where a tidal wave may strike. A tidal wave is, according to her, the doing of all nine of the sisters working together, but it is Bylgja who is in charge of such a thing, just as Ran her mother is in charge of storms at sea. Bylgja is also about the life of the tidepools and the coral reefs, the sea life that lives on the ocean's edge. While her sister Unn is the keeper of the tide's rhythm, Bylgja is the thundering passion of the tides themselves.

If there is one word that could describe her, it would be obsessive. She is passionate, and her passions can become larger and larger until they destroy things. "I am like my mother in that," she said. She is all about obsession, in fact, and spoke to me about its sacred nature. Everything she does, she does totally, without reservation. All Jotunkind are to one extent or another, but Bylgja is especially good at it. Her lesson is about tapping into that obsessive focus so intense that you practically become what it is that you're focusing on. In terms of the natural world, Bylgja seems to be about the wave-form of the ocean's surface, the up and down of its throbbing rhythm.

Bylgja's Lesson:

What you call obsession, that's part of the way of water. Water starts small, just a trickle, and then it gets bigger and bigger until it washes away everything in its path. That's what all water wants to do; that's the ambition of the tiniest drop. It doesn't ever just want to run happily in the beds that it has already carved. When it overflows its borders and sweeps everything away, that's the expression of Water's greatest joy. It may be hard on you, but it's Water rejoicing. You think that the Water is being angry at that time, but that's only because you think that Water is only passive.

But obsession, like anything, can be a tool. It's a knife with two edges, and you can cut both ways. You can use it to do something you don't want to do, but ought to. It won't make you want to do it, but it will make you do it, and in a pinch that can be enough. First you drum it - it's a rhythm that starts slow and gets faster, bigger, louder. Feel it like a tidal wave within yourself. Let it rise and peak. Feel it like joy, like nothing else in the whole world is more important than this thing, this moment, this ride. It's total focus, with your heart as well as your mind.

Use it while you can, because like all things Water, it will pass and change. Water is never static unless it is ice - and that's my sister's lesson, you'll get to that. But the wave rises and breaks, and that's the way it is.

Bylgja's Song

Ride, ride, ride, ride, shore in my sight,
Ride, ride, ride, ride, with all my might,
Ride, ride, ride, ride, through to the end,
Ride, ride, ride, ride, breaker will bend.
Ride, ride, ride, ride, arrow in flight,
Ride, ride, ride, ride, lifting the light,
Ride, ride, ride, ride, crash on the shore,
Ride, ride, ride, ride, dive through the door,
Ride, ride, ride, ride, ride!

Pemaquid Point Beach, Maine, July 2005

Unn

The sun was actually out for a change when we arrived at Pemaquid, although it played hide-and-seek with the clouds. As soon as I arrived and set up by drum on the sand, whole clouds of seabirds descended on the place. There had been only a couple when we arrived, and I was surprised...but later I was to discover that the seabirds are Unn's special creatures.

Unn is a slender, delicate mermaid, like Himinglava. Her mouth was smaller and more bowlike, but I had no doubt that it was filled with razor-sharp teeth. Her face was more heart-shaped, but still with those inhuman eyes and flat features, and her hair was like a cloud of light brown curls that dried and fluffed out the moment she raised her head above water and shook it. Her fingers were long and tapered, like her delicate fishtail, and she was wreathed, neck and waist and arms, in strands of tiny shells that clinked and clicked. "They are for counting on," she said mysteriously when I commented on their beauty.

She rotated slowly in the water in a strange dance, letting me walk in and out of the rising and falling water. Of all the sisters, Unn's lesson was the hardest to understand, because it seemed the most esoteric. Parts of it were sung and other parts spoken, and I am sure that I did not understand much of it. It was odd to go from the blunt, striking lessons of Hronn and Hevring and the others to Unn's vague concepts of time and dimension. She is about the relationship of the sea to the sky, and the rhythm of the tides (although not the force of the tidal waves themselves, that's Bylgja), and to time. She spoke of using the tidal energy as a way to travel through time, which was utterly unexpected by me.

Unn seems to have a close, friendly relationship with Mani, the Moon-etin. She mentioned it briefly, speaking of their mutual love of calendars and counting the passing of days and the cycles of time. Her friendship with him seems to connect to the Moon's control of the tides, and also a love of song and travel. "I sing numbers to him, and he sings them back," she said, and I smiled at the idea that this delicate little mermaid might be a math nerd.

Unn's Lesson

The sea is the keeper of all memory. You'll sing that, but do you understand it? No, of course not. How could you, unless you've experienced it? Oh, that's a nice idea, you'll say, that's a romantic thought, but you don't quite see. So I'll show you, as much as you can see with your human eyes. Here, we are in the daylight, the sky is blue. The moon is three days short of full, even though you can't see it. The tide is going out, it is half gone. So we will look backwards to a time when the moon was the same, and the sky was the same, and the tide was the same, and the place was here. That's how you lock onto it. If you want to see a particular time, you have to find when all those things were the same. That's too difficult, too many details? Well, did you expect this to be easy?

Here, I'll shift to a time two months ago. The season matters, but not so much as you think, surprisingly enough. Now I've drawn the veil in - can you feel it clinging to you, like a web over your shoulders and your sight? Now we are partly in another time, that day two turns of the moon ago. One turn ago, the sky was dark and raining. Why that matters more than the season, that would take too long to explain to you. But you can feel the double layer of time. Be careful - it's fragile. It will break if you don't move carefully, and then it will vanish.

Can you change time if you go back? Of course you can. If I gave you the song to be able to do what, which I won't. This is just for seeing, not for doing. That means you can't get stuck there. That's more important than your being able to mess with time, isn't it? Can you look ahead? Yes, you can, but then you have to deal with the Norns. They might smack you, they might not. You take your chances. There are other ways to look ahead that are safer anyway.

My seabirds all understand this, although they are too silly to do anything about it. They can't keep enough of a focus to do it, but they will notice when you do, and maybe try to follow you. Don't worry about them. They can take care of themselves. They can't count, but they have the counting in them, if you know what I mean. They just know about days and numbers. Crows do too, although they use it for different things. This song will show you where you can go, what days and moments you can reach from each shore, each place. It will help you pull the veil in, pull in the other time. But don't be silly about it. This is not for everyday. It can put feathers in your brain if you do it too much.

Unn's Song

Hey-ho, heave and blow, wind to the westward side,
Gull wing go to the ebb and the flow, and the tern return with the tide.
Kestrel and kite keep the counting road
In the breeze with each beat of their wings,
We swim through the centuries like they were days
And the gift of the gulls is the song that we sing.
Hey-ho, turn back the veil,
And backward we sail, back we go.

Hey-ho, heave and blow, wind to the westward side,
We leap from the land over sea below, and into the salt wind we ride.
Mark the moon his meandering road
Many moons in the making of mine,
The sea is the keeper of memory
And the tides are the rhythm of time.
Hey-ho, turn back the veil,
And backward we sail, back we go.
Hey-ho, heave and blow, wind to the westward side,
Gull wing go to the ebb and the flow, and the tern return with the tide.

Owls' Head Beach, Maine, July 2005

Duva

Owls' Head Beach turned out to be a rocky area next to the lighthouse at Owls' Head. As usual, it was cold and misty and the one family at the beach suddenly decided to pick up and leave as we arrived. This seemed to be the way of things during this beach trip; the weather kept all but a few away, and those few somehow suddenly decided to leave as soon as we arrived. At one beach, there was only a single swimmer in a wetsuit, and he too suddenly about-faced and walked out of the water and toward the parking lot as soon as we showed up. I suppose that the Undines can make the water quite unwelcoming if they want some privacy.

A morning fog covered the water, as it had when I met Hronn. Large, rounded, seaweed-covered rocks lined the water's edge and extended far out into the water; it was treacherous to climb over them and I slipped several times. Perched precariously with my toes digging into the rocks, I waited for Duva the Hidden One to appear.

Like Hevring, she did not come close to me. Some of the Undines are more sociable than others, and Duva, Kolga, and Hevring tend to keep their distance. Duva was a pale figure wreathed in mists, speaking to me from the fog that slowly blew away as I listened and sang. Her long fair hair seemed to wrap her entirely around like a garment. What I could see of her appeared to be slightly scaled and bluish, and her hands bore webbed fingers. She was the most fishlike of the sisters, and although I am not sure what her specific pet creature is, I assume that it must be some kind of fish. Perhaps all fishes are dear to her, for all I know.

Duva is the Lady of Islands, and she shows sailors the way to safe havens on those points of land. She may not, however, be so kind as to abandon someone on an island that they could actually survive on, or one that is close to their home. She is both the keeper of all that is hidden and the revealer of hidden things, and this is her magical specialty. One thing that did strike me was how much she loved pearls. One thinks of mermaids as dripping with pearls, but her sisters all tended to wear more primitive shell and stone jewelry. Duva wore strand after strand of pearls wound about her slender torso and through her long hair. She toyed with them as she spoke.

Duva's Lesson:

I know what it is that you want from me, and although I am loath to yield up my treasures, you have come all this way and my sisters have agreed to give you gifts. So I must do so as well, for what eight agree to, nine must agree as well; it is the way we have always been. There, I have already revealed more than I wished. I know what it is that you want from me: to know how to reveal what is hidden.

I will give you the song you wish, but you must understand that there is a price for each time you use it. The price will not be told to you until after you have found your way through. I give that much to you. The rest you will have to discover on your own.

This is not for revealing every thing that anyone thinks, or knows. It is for when you are lost at sea, when you have no idea where to go or what to do, when you are desperate enough for any haven. It will not take you home. It will take you to safety, wherever that is; the closest safety. It will reveal the way that has been hidden from you, but it is up to you to take it. This song will show you the way out of the fog and the storm, but the knowledge must be used wisely. What it will not do is show you where the hidden treasures are kept, the secrets of Wyrd and the Cosmos. Those are mine to know and to hold onto; I will not share them. You will have to get them from others, more loose-handed and loose-lipped than me.

I have already told you too much. I will say no more.

Duva's Song

Duva, Duva...
Lead the way to the hurricane's lee,
I am lost at sea, I will pay your fee.
Show me the way to the hidden sands,
Follow to your hand, though strange be the land.

Duva, Duva....
Lead the way to the shrouded cove,
Take my sight in tow, through the fog I rove,
Open the curtain and show me the way
To the sacred land, and the price I'll pay.

Duva, Duva...
Mists that cover the island fair,
Like your pale mist-hair, you will find me there,
I fear not the mist and dew,
May your way be true, I will trust in you,
Duva, Duva....

Lucia Beach, Maine, July 2005

Kolga

As I approached Lucia Beach, the rain started up again and the temperature dropped. For all that it was the beginning of July, it was cold enough to be March or October. My fingers were stiff as I drummed and sang the calling song, and when I made my way into the water, it was bone-breakingly cold. The clouds deepened as I slowly dragged myself in, lowering the temperature still further. By the time I was in up to my thighs, I couldn't feel my feet any longer and the skin on my legs was burning. I knew without being told that the sister I was visiting at this moment was the Cold One, the Lady of Ice Water.

Kolga, Duva's twin and her elder sister by a few minutes, indeed the eldest of Ran's daughters, appeared without fanfare a little ways away from me. She was neither as distant as Duva or Hevring nor as close and personal as Blodughadda or Hronn. She was bony and angular, her skin a pale grey-blue and her hair silvery-grey, with the look of frost on both of them. Her face was gaunt, the skin stretched over her bony features, and her eyes were narrowed in speculation. When she spoke, her voice was harsh as a crow's, unlike the others who all seemed to have mellifluous voices. I could see the frost-thurse in her background; those bloodlines had come through the strongest in Kolga.

"You can't come in any further than that?" she asked scornfully. "I thought you had mastered fire."

I was actually running my body-heating abilities on high just to be able to stand there in the frigid water with her, and I told her so. She snorted, unimpressed. "You know what you're here to learn," she stated. It was not a question.

"To cool myself," I said. "To be able to use cold." Heating myself had been a fairly easy trick for me, as I run hot anyway. The opposite, however, eluded me. I was often overheated in the summer, dependent on air conditioning to function. This was a problem.

Kolga looked at me severely, like a student that she could tell immediately was going to be a problem. Her mouth pinched like that of a schoolmarm. She seemed to be utterly motionless up to her hips in the frigid water. "This won't come easy for you," she said.

"All the more reason that I should learn it," I said, my teeth chattering. Her eyes traveled up and down my body, the only thing about her that was moving. Even her mouth hardly moved when she spoke. Kolga is about the sea's relationship to ice, the frozen northern parts, and to its temperature in general. She was silent for a long while as I struggled in the water, and then finally she turned in one graceful movement and I saw the flip of a fishtail for a moment. Then she settled back to her motionless floating position, this time only her head and shoulders showing, and began to speak to me in a cold, deadpan voice.

Kolga's Lesson:

First, cold is about slowness. Don't expect to this to work while you're running around. Stop. Be still. Empty your lungs, all the way down. Push all the warmth out of you. Water can be warm, yes, but it would rather be cold than warm. In fact, most of the water in the Universe is in the form of ice; you know that.

As you sing the chant, focus on your solar plexus. That's your internal thermostat. Find the right note to start on; it will be the note that sends a chill to that point of your body. Sing that note for a while, then start the song on it. You may have to sing it a few times, if it's a really hot day. Feel your solar plexus slowing, feel ice start to form around it. Breathe that cold out to your toes and fingers, but especially your neck and head. Run it up and down your spine, and don't let yourself shiver. Shivering is your body's attempt to warm itself. Make yourself stay still, the stiller the better, until you're cool enough that you can move and not undo it all.

Kolga's Song

Oooooooh....
As the ice-bulls ride on the cold grey meadow,
As the ice-hills glide on the cold grey plain,
Let the ice-grey maiden wrap me in her mantle
Let her rime-cold fingers stroke my spine.
Oooooh...

Oooooh...
As the ice-winds whip all the clouds to tatters,
Let her strip the heat from my suffering bones,
Cold as ice yet always moving,
Let the ice-grey maiden turn water to stone.
Ooooooh....

Reid State Park Beach, Maine: July 2005

Bara

Reid State Park Beach was another rocky one, with lots of sheer cliffs and stones underfoot, and piles of driftwood on the upper sands. The sea was pretty violent after days of rain and storm, and was smashing itself hard into the cliffs. I had barely finished my drumming call when Bara came sauntering up to through the surf, if indeed one could name a sort of bouncing swim as sauntering.

She was an enormous mermaid - not just tall (or long, I suppose one could say), which she was, but wide around as well. Hugely fat, billowing rolls of flesh, great breasts bouncing in the water, long dark brown hair draped over her broad, muscular shoulders, which were also draped with hundreds of strings of beads. Her face was round and fleshy, with at least two chins, and a big crooked-toothy grin. Wide sea-dollar earrings dangled from beneath her draggled locks. Her tail was that of a whale's, and she carried a big club that looked like the toothed jawbone of some enormous animal.

She hailed me merrily, and slammed her club onto the rocks, and the waves leaped up and hurled themselves at the cliff with a roar. In spite of myself, I laughed. She looked very much as if she was enjoying herself thoroughly. "Come dance with me!" she cried, and although the water was bitterly cold, I tried my best to come in and swim a little. She rolled over and over in the water, great flukes splashing, rolls of pale mer-flesh billowing, and then she rushed at the land again in a great wave and slammed her club against the cliffs once more.

Bara is all about the sea's relationship to the dry land, which she explained to me saucily in no uncertain terms. We tend to talk about the sea as nourishing the land, but the land directly by the ocean is not terribly good for growing cultivated human food, although in a balanced ecosystem there is plenty of wild food at the seaside. But Bara's feelings were something else entirely, and reminded me yet again that the ocean does not exist for our benefit.

Bara's Lesson:

The sea's relationship to the land is always one of antagonism. Yes, I know, that makes you shake your head, you think that all things in Nature work in harmony with each other. Well, they do. Harmony does not always mean kindness. The wolf is in harmony with the rabbit when she catches and eats him, yes? At least, they are in harmony with Nature's plan for them. And what the sea wants to do, what all water wants to do if it admits it, is to take the land apart.

So it tries, bit by bit, piece by piece. If the sea has its way, the land would all be floating in tiny bits within its waves, or at its bottom, the way it used to be before the land became arrogant and heaved itself up. In the end, the sea remembers the time long ago when all the earth was ocean, before the land was forced up high. The sea wants to go back to that time, and because part of water's nature is endless patience, it will keep trying until it succeeds.

But patience doesn't have to mean peacefulness! My pets, the whales - they once came out of the sea and grew into predators on the land. Then they came back to the sea and became predators there! That's a story I like. What you need to know from me is that patience takes muscle, it takes strength. What kind of surety does it take to know that you are the oldest element, and that you are intent on destroying the whole world? This song is about wearing down the endurance of obstacles, not like a mouse who gnaws a tiny hole, but like the ocean waves who get out there and bang away, day after day. This is a song for your own endurance as well, and the ability to wear down the task, bit by bit, when you are feeling weak and tired. This antagonism is good, it is good for the world. It is joyful antagonism. Those who say that all things must be accomplished only with serenity, who do not understand the sacredness of joyful antagonism, they are not looking at the real world, the natural world. We Jotnar understand this. So should you. So slam away at it!

Bara's Song

Carry you out to the white-capped waters,
Wash you away to the wild wet womb,
Batter you, bash you, beat you down,
To be worn by the waves is the way of your doom.

Chorus:
For I am the strength of the mighty ocean,
The patience of ten centuries,
Though once it birthed you, spat you, flung you,
Return you now to the endless seas.

Stone, you are lucky to be backed by cliff and
Cliff, you are lucky to be backed by land,
But I will grind you grain by grain,
From cliff to stone, from stone to sand.

For I am the strength of the mighty ocean,
The patience of ten centuries,
Though once it birthed you, spat you, flung you,
Return you now to the endless seas.

Raven Kaldera
cauldronfarm@hotmail.com

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