My Road to Yggdrasil Is Lined With Blueberries

This is the third in a series of guest blog posts by up-and-coming author, Suzanne Hersey. Her first book, Faith, Food, Family, will be available from Iaconagraphy Press in Fall of 2018!

According to Neil Price:

“In the Viking World View everything was in Yggdrasil and Yggdrasil was in everything.”

–Neil Price, “The Viking Mind: The Children of Ash: Cosmology and the Viking Universe”, CornellCast Series, 2012

http://www.cornell.edu/video/the-children-of-ash-cosmology-and-the-viking-universe

As I spoke about in my last blog post, guided meditation and astral travel have been a struggle for me for a long time. I have done a lot of work, as of late, on regaining my sovereignty and rebuilding that stolen part of my soul that was holding me back. As I have progressed, I have discovered another roadblock: I compare myself and my “successes” to everyone else’s. That is really never a healthy thing, when it comes to faith practice is it? I think to some degree we all do this.

Recently, I went “under the cloak” (sat utiseta), in order to reach Yggdrasil, and touch base, so to speak, with the Gods to Whom I am devoted (fulltrua). It was not like anyone else’s journey, and I found myself, despite the amazing message that I received, doubting: because other very gifted witches always talk about seeing this beautiful World-Tree, with its many roots and branches, and climbing among those branches and stepping into journeys within its roots. I have made it to that tree in some ways during guided meditation, with my guide describing the journey for me. My solo trip would turn out to be an entirely different landscape than anyone else’s, however, and that left me wondering: was this a true journey, or mental sock puppets and mugwort at work? So let me tell you about that first trip alone:

I lay on my bed, in as much quiet as our house allows, seeing that cats don’t actually care that you are trying to get somewhere outside yourself. I lit some incense that I had been gifted by an amazing witch, Justice. I placed a veil over my eyes, centered, played my Tibetan singing bowl, and then I just let go. A few years ago, I started working on lucid dreaming by reading a book by Michelle Belanger called Psychic Dreamwalking. Using the exercises in that book, I “built” my “place”, from where I would start all of my lucid dreams; where I could go and be safe, and where I could form doors through which to walk to others, when I was ready. That place was one I have fought to remember, because it is the center of my forgotten childhood. The memories that others in my family have from that place are merely empty chasms for me. I “built” my grandparents’ cabin on the bay in Maine, fully equipped with a dock, the cabin itself, surrounding woods, lapping water, and decaying great ship, sitting out in the bay. As you came down the driveway of that home, it was lined with wild blueberry bushes. You could smell them. That I remembered. I placed my Aunt Helen in the kitchen at the sink, smiling at me, where I could remember her beautiful face. I placed a door in the woods, through which I could journey. I would go there often in dreams, and just sit on the dock; just smile at my aunt through the window; just touch the blueberry bushes. I never tried to leave that safe space. The night of my journey forth, I found myself not at a great World-Tree, but at that place. Standing there in the middle of the yard and hearing the water, I searched to find my Grandpa Harold. I have heard from him sometimes along this journey, and I yearned for his comfort. Instead, I found myself dragging my hands through blueberry bushes, staining them blue. My aunt was there in the window. I believe I was not dreaming; I was aware of the cat next to me on the bed. I could feel the damp summer grass and rough stones on my bare feet. I walked to the dock and looked toward the bay, where the great ship swam between a pile of wood and its full self, in all its glory. Time seemed to be shifting as I sat on that dock, as I had many times as a child. I saw in the water a small sand shark circling, the one my brothers had caught so many years ago. I think we ate it; Grandpa Harold’s rule was “you eat what you catch”. Grandpa finally came and sat with me; he gave me a quick embrace and then left me sitting there, holding the Ansuz rune in my tiny child hands. Another old man came to sit with me. He put an arm around me and we watched that shark go round and round. “All things dead live here,” he said. The shark is gone, and now I see a mother crab with her baby on her back. I had caught that crab when I was a child and tried to shake it from my fishing line, so I wouldn’t have to eat it. I didn’t win that fight. “What dies lives in us,” he says, petting my long sun-kissed hair and whispering to me in comfort; laughing to distract me. I am on my belly now, fingertips in the water, touching that little shark. I am sixteen, gangly and awkward, then eighteen, with my long blonde hair, thin and sexy. Then I am a mother, fat with her first child, then old, with long silver hair. I smile at him, and the tears fall there in that place, but also from my own physical eyes. “Time to go, child,” he says, and I try to stay, but instead I find myself going back up that curvy driveway, edged with wild blueberries, and I am home. I took that journey again in a few days, only to find myself again at the cabin. This time, I found my Sasha, my little wolf-dog I loved so much, who had crossed the rainbow bridge when I was a child. And we ran through the woods together, and I wondered where the door was that I needed. And I was told by my Heimdall that it was “in the cabin, my silly girl”. And so it was, and so I found myself inside the World-Tree.

I would take that journey again, one week later, trying to get to Yggdrasil and meet Hel; to see Her, and perhaps my parents, as it was their anniversary; to find the crossroads. On that journey, I met that Goddess of Death, while I struggled in the vast ocean, trying to swim after my Sasha and reach the ship: the way I knew to get to Her door and to my parents. I couldn’t get there: the cats were fighting and dragging me from my journey. She looked sideways at those naughty cats outside our experience and said to me: “Perhaps you should try to float instead of always swimming against the tide.” The Gods have a sense of humor I think. I almost gave up. I have known others who have journeyed to find Hel, and they have all shared these amazing journeys to Yggdrasil, during which they saw their ancestors. Meanwhile, I nearly drowned with my dead wolf-dog! But I am blessed to have friends and teachers to bring me around, and I learned that my journey to Yggdrasil is lined with wild blueberries, and maybe our paths are different, but the destination is all around us: in everything we see and touch and feel and know.

I hope you find your path; perhaps we will see each other there one day. There are doors in that old house and one in the old ship, and a road to my safe place. Beware the wolf-dog, should you stop by.