Utiseta - The Crossroads of Life

By Lien De Coster

After a few hours the storm finally calms down and I start to take in where I am. I realize I have been holding onto a tiny piece of flintstone all along. I found it yesterday on the sandy shore of the lakeside, where an old local was telling us of the people who once knew how to use these stones and make them into tools. Now that I am sitting here out on the land in a Swedish forest, exposed to the elements, I feel a strange kinship to them. Time has become elastic already and the flintstone is my doorway into different eras and realms.

Only hours ago my friend and I walked away from the relative comfort of base camp. We were full of excitement and loudly sang ‘Aux Champs Elysées’, then giggled loudly at the fact we didn’t know any more of the lyrics and at the inappropriateness of the song. At the time we weren’t aware of the reference to the Elysian fields, the place of afterlife of Greek mythology, and how spot on that is for a ritual that is all about death and rebirth.

(Sebastiaen Vrancx, The Elysium, or Aeneas Finding His Father at the Elysian Fields, between 1597 and 1607)

We had only rounded the first corner of the trail before rain started hammering down on us. The kind of rain that doesn’t care about rain jackets. Tree nor rock could provide for shelter. It was in this curtain of rain I more or less blindly found the spot where I would remain the coming days and nights. It had felt like a cave and I now see they are two huge rocks leaning against each other. Like two hugging stone beings. I will never unpack my tarp. I also see my view consists of a clearcut. Not exactly the image I had in mind when dreaming into this but I still feel curious about what I will discover.

That night I sleep in my cave spooning a rock and being spooned by another one. I just fit and it feels intimate. The next day the sun comes out and I feel ecstatic seeing my clothes dry. I sit and observe the clearcut. A woodpecker comes and feeds on a dead tree a few meters away from me. I see the white dots on its black wing feather and the red dot on its head. I have a billion of questions and I feel fascinated by the fact this bird comes to feed in a place that had seemed dead to me. I will watch it for many more hours the coming days and in this barren landscape I get more and more permeated by a sense of abundance, a true sense of nature providing, how I only have to reach out and what I need is there. Right, little flintstone?

On the way back from the buddy spot, where I daily go to leave a sign of life for my friend and check whether she has left hers, I pass by a roaring river. I have been cloud and rock and soil the past days and now I am water. It washes through me telling all of the stories that have made up my life till now and all of a sudden I find myself on my knees weeping like a child. With gratitude. I am alive and have so much and so many to thank. I decide to write letters when I get back to pen and paper, to let people know what they mean to me, to not take things for granted.

Swedish River - Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

That last evening I fall asleep in a state of bliss that will remain for quite a while after the sitout. I wake up dreaming of horses. Wait no, they are real. I press my ear harder to the ground and can clearly hear them galloping my way. It must be a big, wild herd and they are approaching rapidly. As I am coming out of my state between sleeping and waking I remember there are bears, wolves and a bunch of other animals but no horses around. I finally identify the herd as the rumble of the thunder. My solo time is ending this morning and another storm is coming. I count the seconds between the thunder and lightning the way I did as a child. In no time there is no counting left to be done. The storm is right above my head and I am looking up in my little cave, feeling the electricity in the air, tasting awe on my tongue. I feel big and small at the same time and I make a pledge to myself. I will never forget I am alive. Even more: I will do everything I can to remind others they are alive too.

**********************************************************************************

A handful of years later. I lie under a thin cloak on a crossroads on the Dutch heather. It is warm and sandy. Insects buzz. By now I have been holding space for other people to go out on the land for some years and I am researching which ritual practices used to exist in northwestern Europe. From my shamanic teacher Linda Wormhoudt I learn about utiseta and that is exactly why we are in this sacred landscape sprinkled with burial mounds. To lie on the crossroads feels counterintuitive at first, to splash myself out like that in the middle of the road, exposed to walkers-by. But some of my fellow students are guarding me and I relax. Now something feels strangely familiar. According to the old sources crossroads are one of the places where the valas, the old seidr-practicioners, would turn to for oracling.

I haven’t come here with a specific question, more to come and get to know the spirit of the crossroads. I greet you, old one, wise one. I ask you for permission to be here. I come to tell you we haven’t forgotten you. If there is anything you would like to show me today I am here with and open heart and soul to learn. I feel the different directions and how they all have their own taste. I send out the part of me that knows how to travel down different roads to explore. Now stay. I stay. Where all the roads meet. The place turns into the eye of the storm. So often crossroads seems to be a place of restlessness where choices are demanding to be made. Not now. Here is peace. I now feel how all the roads are coming towards me. Until one of them claims me. Come. I choose you. So I get up and I follow. Thank you, spirit of the crossroads.

Photo by Evelyn Mostrom on Unsplash

The same day we sit on the burial mounds on the heather, a way to gain wisdom through contact with the ancestors. It may sound like a morbid practice today but in the ancestor culture that used to be ours and in which the dead were still very much part of daily life it wasn’t quite as eccentric. All of us sit on different burial mounds and come back with different stories, all surprisingly specific. Some talk about midwives, some about leaders. When somebody raises doubt about our experiences my teacher grins. Archaeological research has been done in this area and based on the objects found in the different graves we have a fairly good idea of the role of the people in the burial mounds. The parallels with our observations leave us speechless.

The sitout doesn’t cease to fascinate me. The encounters with crossroads on our life path are as real today as they were in the old days. So is the longing to turn to something more-than-human which holds the wild intelligence of flintstone, woodpecker, and storm.

Lien De Coster

Lien De Coster has guided nature-based ritual as Leaves of Lien for over a decade. They hold sitouts, rites of passage for teenagers and grief rituals.

Originally from Belgium Lien is now based at the Swedish west coast. There they continue their exploration of the old ways of north-western Europe and how to translate them to contemporary times contributing to an ecocentric culture.

Curious to experience a sitout yourself?

The Well of Memory takes place at the west coast of Sweden from July 27th till August 5th 2024. There is a free info Zoom on March 18th at 7pm. More info and registration:

https://www.leavesoflien.com/sitout