[expand]
Seidr was not innate gift but learned skill requiring training, practice, initiation into mysteries that couldn’t be discovered independently.
The Teacher:
One learned from experienced practitioner—typically older woman who had mastered techniques, survived the spiritual dangers, earned respect or at least fear from community. The relationship was apprenticeship: years of observation, practice under supervision, gradual revelation of secrets as student demonstrated readiness and trustworthiness.
Some knowledge was explicit—songs, recipes, procedures. Other knowledge was transmitted through experience—how trance felt, how to navigate spirit realms, how to recognize truth from deception in visions. The teacher provided guidance but also protection—watching over student during early trance journeys, retrieving them if they became lost, defending against spiritual entities that might attack vulnerable beginner.
The Initiation:
Some sources suggest initiation ordeals—extended fasting, isolation, exposure to elements, ordeal by fear or pain. These served multiple purposes: testing commitment, breaking down ordinary consciousness to enable access to non-ordinary states, demonstrating to spirits that initiate was serious, creating liminal state where transformation became possible.
Odin’s self-sacrifice on Yggdrasil—hanging nine nights, speared, suffering—was described as his seidr initiation, moment when he learned runes and gained magical knowledge. If the supreme god required such ordeal, mortal initiates could expect their own testing, their own suffering as price of power.
The Dangers:
Learning seidr was hazardous. Trance states were vulnerable—spirit could get lost, trapped in Otherworld, unable to return to body. Hostile entities might attack, possess, drive mad. The knowledge gained might overwhelm, destroy sanity, make normal life impossible to resume. Some initiates never recovered, remaining damaged, strange, unable to function in ordinary reality.
The teacher’s role included protecting student from worst dangers, but some risks couldn’t be eliminated. Every journey into trance was gamble, every working carried possibility of disaster. The successful practitioner was not merely skilled but lucky, protected by spirits or gods, tough enough to survive what destroyed weaker individuals.
[/expand]