The High Seat Ritual

An Old Practice - by Andreas Kornevall

In The High Seat Ritual that I have developed over the years, we come together with the intention to raise the voices of older women, to hear their oracular words and to celebrate the power of the Crone-Spirit.

To be of service of a High Seat is a great privilege.

Through induced trance, the Völva (Witch, Wise Woman) travels the ancient routes of the Tree of Life. She travels into the non-ordinary fields of knowledge to bring back answers to our questions and to illuminate part of our lives and give advice; she summons the soul of the great imagination: the Mundi Imaginalis.

Beauty and wonder are weaved together in a participatory gesture with the Spirits and the Gods and Goddesses.

The role of the participants is to build a High Seat worthy of this sacred practice. Originally High Seats were built as ritual platforms called “Seiðrhjallr” where the Völva could see far towards the horizon and where she could also be beheld by the Spirits and the Ancestors.

Around the platform, candles are lit and bundles and offerings are laid to be at her feet.

All conflicts amongst attendees must be cleared and reconciliations made before she steps onto the platform.

As with all ceremony, the individual participants enter a larger community and serve something bigger than himself/herself. For a moment together, we forget our own worries and neuroses and we focus on the larger life.

In an atomised society, the individual takes precedence and therefore public ceremonies are fading, we have become suspicious of this form and our digitalised world breaks down our community spirit. We have lost the knowledge of the symbolic forces that ceremonies bring to us and the powerful influence it can have on our emotions and wellbeing.

The intention is that external forms such as the High Seat influences the interior world of the community. An influence that nourishes the landscape and the people that live there.

The High Seat is a time for fellowship. The Wise Woman who is sitting is ritually prepared during the day, she eats minimal food and instead spends time in contemplation, journeying, cleansing, reflection and meditation. She is readying herself to journey high and deep into the worlds of the Tree of Life, Yggdrasil.

The participants build the ritual platform and gather their own ritual tools and prepare themselves. The platform can be made into an elemental shrine surrounded by the spirit of air, water, earth, and fire. The Völva may have her own preferences, one element can be more present than others; a fire-shrine, an earth-shrine, a water-shrine; this is significant depending on whether we are in the winter time, or at the height of spring and summer.

Also as an inspiration from the old Anglo-Saxon land healing ritual, the Acerbot, we gather soil from the landscape from the four directions offering it oils, incense, sacred mead and prayers, all as a gesture and gift-giving to the landlords, the land spirits, the anima loci; we praise the robin, raven, badger, fox, oak and ash, and the invisible ones.

The ceremony begins by forming a reconciliation ritual amongst those present and if there is any discord, we make reconciliation oaths and bonds, as without this there cannot be a ceremony.

Then the singing of the Wards (Souls) of the ancestors begin, often in galdr form (chants) or rune songs learnt and prepared during the day. We create a rhythm by beating the ends of staffs, or using drums, bull roarers, and shakers. The sound and the chants carry us into a state of altered consciousness, we travel into the imaginal, into the Soul of the World (The Tree of Life), in a light or deep trance. This sound and song is the very invocation for the Völva to be amongst us to ascend to her platform, she will be hooded and clad in her ceremonial attire, carrying her staff.

But she will wait to ascend to her seat until the spirits and ancestors are fully present. Only when the songs have touched her heart does she enter the ritual. If the singing is without the ecstasy, without the spirits, she may decide not to go ahead. This is a serious proposition and the longer she waits, the more the participants have to make the necessary sonic sounds and prayers calling for her to ascend. She is not easily persuaded because after a whole day of preparation, the Völva will be in an non-ordinary reality and can have many reasons not to take the High Seat, especially if there are intrusive spirits or energies that are hostile to the ceremony itself.

That is why the reconciliation ritual sets the right intention to bring forth the compassionate spirits.

Once she has decided to approach the High Seat, she is led in by her consorts, the Shield Maidens, her physical protectors. The Blot-Godi and Gydja presiding over the ceremony also make sure she is well protected throughout the process. She is smudged with plants from the land (pine resin, mugwort or rosemary, here in the UK) and anointed with oils and her hood sprinkled with holy mead.

The Shield Maidens are also there to make sure people participating are well looked after.

As she enters and sits at her High Seat, she begins her walk between the worlds.

What happens next in the ceremony is something that stays only between the participants.

I know of no other ritual like it.

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I am conducting a High Seat ritual on the 6th and 7th of July at the Centre for Complimentary Medicine at Clophill. See here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-return-of-the-volva-high-seat-ritual-in-high-summer-tickets-907589894807?aff=oddtdtcreator

If you are interested in this practice and form, I will be teaching this in the Sun and the North Star course that I am leading with the School of Mythopoetics: https://www.schoolofmythopoetics.com/sunandnorthstar

For mentorship and training in this practice, contact: Andreas Kornevall mythandstories@gmail.com

Sources Northern Seidr Practice:

Saga of Gisli Surson
Erik the Red Saga
Vatnsdeala Saga
Poetic and Prose Edda