I just finished reading the article "Seidr and Modern Paganism" by Jan Fries in The Cauldron No. 139 (February 2011). It raised some good points, about our understanding of ancient Seidr, about modern neopagan/neoheathen Seidr, and about magic, ritual, tradition, and religion in general. The article is an edited extract of his book, Seidways: Shaking, Swaying and Serpent Mysteries
, from Mandrake Press of Oxford. The article makes me want to read the book in its entirety.I guess there's a lot of controversy from the neopagan/neoheathen community about his association of Seidr with the shaking of other shamanistic cultures in Europe. It doesn't match what the modern community has come to associate with the name Seidr, based on their reading of the lore and their experiences. The article is basically his response to their objections, in summary form.
Enough with reviewing the article. I want to discuss one specific paragraph here. I'll leave out the last two sentences as they aren't related to what I want to discuss, but relates the rest of the paragraph to the flow of his argument. I recommend reading the article in its entirety to get the context.
But seething was also part of sacrifice. The Vikings never offered raw or burned meat to their deities. To prepare a proper sacrifice, you suspended a cauldron on a chain from the temple roof and seethed the flesh until it was tender, The scent arising from the sacrifice were an essential part of the sacrifice. In Gothic the participants of the sacrifice were suthnautar, the 'seething companions'. So whatever else the word may have implied, there was something sacred to seething.I want to address several things here. These are the Cauldron, the tenderness of the meat, the aroma, and the "seething companions".
