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Northern European Starting Points

Magical and animistic practices that are good starting points for people of Northern European descent:

  • Working with local or ancestral land spirits, for example Hawthorn, Rowan, Yew, local lakes and mountains, springs and native animals.
  • Working with local or ancestral deities and spirits, such as the Celtic pantheon, Merlin, fairies and elemental beings.
  • Working with local or ancestral folk magic, such as hagstones, witch bottles and charms.
  • Working with your ancestors.
  • Working with your kin and helping animal spirits, which could be any native species.
  • Working with divination methods such as mirror gazing, inky water, tarot and runes.
  • Personal work to honour the Earth and her inhabitants as a whole.
  • Personal work to develop deeper empathy, connection and awareness of interdependence.
  • Personal work to increase creativity and inspiration.
  • Personal work to confront and integrate dark aspects of yourself and your culture.
  • Personal work to heal conflicts and harm caused by your ancestors to the land, other people and yourself.
  • Personal work for a better relationship with your body.
  • Personal work for a better relationship with your land and environment.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but merely a place to start working with animism and magic that honours your own heritage while respecting the heritage of others enough to not occupy it.

Those of us with Northern European heritage have rich roots of animist to draw upon in our practice, and while the animism of other cultures can be beautiful and inspiring, we have to be careful not to bring materialist and collonialist attitudes to our spiritual practice.

It’s clear that all humans have animist heritage and access to magical methods, but that when we take the spiritual language and methods of cultures we don’t belong to, we rip them from their roots, damaging both our own practice and that of the people we took them from.

Folk Magic

Folk magic is what happens when animist methods like ceremony, craft, altar work and working with spirit helpers are combined.

Folk magic can be very specific to the time period, location and people who are using it; it’s often shared between members of a tradition, and it’s commonly called witchcraft in European areas. It can be subtle or expansive, more or less structured, solitary or communal; it differs from the Occult traditions in it’s open, flexible, changing nature.

Folk magic is useful when:

  • We have been given a spiritual teaching to embody throughout our day.
  • We want to protect our boundaries, at home or abroad.
  • We need an anchor for our power, nature or inspiration to carry with us.
  • We want to affect a change in our lives, such as better health or changing a habit.
  • We want to honour a relationship with a deity, spirit helper, animal, plant, ancestor, place or person.
  • We are working on embodying or invoking a spirit helper’s magic.
  • We need creative inspiration.

Folk magic is the flexible conclusion of animist practices; when we put them together, we have a toolkit for dealing with any situation, and for solving any problem. It is founded on the fundamental tools of animism; ceremony, altar work, crafting, spirit communication, divination.

Once we are comfortable with these fundamental tools, we can play with them to create exactly what we need in our animist practice.

To learn how to use the fundamental tools of animism, join the free 12 week course here.

Initiation

Initiation is an ancient practice that marks a transition point in a practitioner’s life with ceremony and symbolism.

Initiations can also be called rites of passage; many ancient forms still survive throughout the world. Some of these initiations are well known in Western culture, such as wedding rites, baby showers and funerals. Others, such as those when we enter a new animist practice or begin a new relationship with a spirit helper, are much more personal.

Initiation practices are helpful when:

  • We make the leap from childhood to adulthood.
  • We enter a new relationship.
  • We leave an old relationship.
  • We embark on a new spiritual path.
  • We begin the dying process.

Every time we move from one life stage to the next, initiation can help us to honour and let go of the old and become open to the new.

Initiations usually include a form of ceremony; this can be formal or informal, public or private, planned or spontaneous. We often create on-the-spot ceremonies for these moments of transition, as part of our inherent animist natures, for example when we create shrines of flowers in the places where people die.

Initiations are both about the persona who is transitioning in their life, and about the witnesses of that transition, if there are any. In an animist tradition, when we begin a new phase of practice we often experience an initiation with only our spirit helpers as witnesses, but in public rites of passage the whole community may be the witness.

To begin working with initiations for yourself, consider how you might honour your new animist practice. Explore methods to create a ceremony for this new relationship, or allow yourself to be guided in creating a spontaneous initiation ritual.

For more about ceremony in animist practice, join the free 12 week Foundation in Animism course here: