Come… draw the door-curtain tight, for what I am about to speak is the hidden heart of seidhr, the part that is never shouted from the high seat, only whispered between women in the dark, or between lover and beloved when the fire burns low and the night is thick with spirits.
In the deepest understanding of the Old Way, seidhr is an erotic craft.
Not merely “love-magic” to bind a reluctant heart (though that is part of it), but a deliberate, sacred weaving of sexual force into the very threads of fate.
1. The Wand and the Loom
The seidhkona’s staff is ash or rowan, but it is also, in the secret language, the phallus of the world-tree.
When she mounts the high seat and sets the staff between her thighs, she is enacting the primal union of sky and earth, of god and giantess, of Odin and the völva who taught him the craft.
The drum-beat between her knees is the heartbeat of arousal; the rising heat in her body is the fire that loosens the soul and lets it ride.
2. Orgasm as Doorway
The moment of climax (whether alone, with a chosen partner, or in ritual circle) is the instant the soul is most easily slips its flesh-tether.
Many a völva learns to ride the wave of pleasure until the body shakes and the spirit bursts free in hamfara.
The seed spilled, or the moon-blood caught on linen, becomes the strongest binding ingredient in any spell of love, dominion, or curse.
(for it carries the raw creative fire of life itself).
3. The Three Sacred Postures
- The Riding Seat: the völva astride her staff or a living partner, rocking in trance, drawing power upward from the root of the spine to the crown.
- The Mare’s Stance: on hands and knees, back arched, breath snorting like the night-mare, used when sending gandr or curses.
- The Opened Flower: lying back, thighs wide, receiving the spirits into the body (the most perilous, for the völva may conceive a spirit-child or be ridden herself).
4. Seidhr and Gender-Bending
Men who work deep seidhr often grow soft of voice and manner; the craft demands they take the receptive role.
The god who taught seidhr (Odin) was called “argr” (unmanly) for it, yet he wore the stigma proudly.
A male seidhmadr may lie beneath another man in ritual, or be penetrated by the staff, to open the same gate women open more easily.
Thus seidhr is said to “un-man” the proud and “over-woman” the shy, making the soul fluid as quicksilver.
5. The Love-Death and the Binding
The greatest love-spells are worked at the edge of orgasm and death: a strand of hair from the beloved braided with a lock from a corpse, anointed with mingled seed and moon-blood, buried beneath the threshold at new moon.
Or the völva takes the lover in the graveyard itself, upon the mound of an ancestor, so that love and death are knotted forever.
6. The Price of Pleasure-Magic
Every time sexual force is used in seidhr, something is owed.
The spirits drink deep of that fire.
A völva who works too much love-magic without giving back (through offerings, blood, or her own barrenness) finds her womb withered or her heart turned to ice.
Men who spill seed in trance may wake impotent for a season, or haunted by succubus-spirits who drain them nightly.
7. The Ritual of the Nine Nights
When a new völva is ready for the deepest initiation, she spends nine nights with nine chosen partners (sometimes women, sometimes men, sometimes both), each night in a different sacred posture, each night giving and receiving in turn.
On the ninth dawn she rises, raw, luminous, and terrifyingly powerful, carrying the mingled seed of all nine in a silver cup.
That cup is poured onto the roots of an ancient ash as final offering, and the woman is forever after marked as “bride of the staff.”
This, then, is the hidden fire beneath the smoke of seidhr: sex is not ornament or side-path; it is the very loom on which fate is rewoven.
The craft is erotic because creation itself is erotic (birth, death, and desire braided tight).
Guard these words close, lover of mysteries.
Speak them only to one who has already tasted the salt and the honey of the rite, or to one whose eyes burn to taste it.
Thus speaks Brynhildr, daughter of night and fire, beneath the silent moon.
May Freyja’s heat and Odin’s cold wisdom guard the gate of thy body and thy soul alike.