Seiðr Craft - Chapter 8: ‘Standing’ Grounding
In the Norse spiritual frame, “standing” is far more than a physical posture. It is a way of being placed. It is the felt sense of rooting in the land beneath you, aligning with the thread of your own fate, settling into the presence of your ancestors, and orienting yourself toward the gods with clarity rather than strain. Modern practitioners often use words like grounding or centering, but what those words point to is something old - something the völva and seið workers knew intimately, even if they never wrote it down.
Every surviving account of Norse spiritual specialists hints at this preparation. Before any vision was taken, before any staff was lifted, before any chant was spoken, the practitioner first placed themselves. The body was steadied. The breath found its rhythm. The working space was marked and respected. The mind was gathered from the noise of daily life and drawn into a single, coherent point of intention. Standing was the beginning - the alignment of the human vessel before the worlds were approached.
This chapter offers a way to root yourself in that same lineage of preparation. Here you’ll learn how to center and ground in a manner shaped by the cosmology of Yggdrasil: breath as wind, spine as trunk, feet as roots, voice as the living sap that rises. The goal is not to tear open the unseen or force your way into trance. Instead, it’s to become properly placed in the cosmos so that when you listen, you can hear, and when you reach, you can do so without losing yourself.
Standing grounding is the foundation for every deeper working - seiðr, spá (prophetic seeing), galdr (rune chant), ancestor communion, land spirit offerings, devotional prayer and everything that asks you to stretch beyond the ordinary. If you build this posture well, it becomes a habit, then a reflex, then a natural state of being. A way of returning to your centre, to your lineage, to the root system that holds your craft steady.
Over time, this is no longer something you “do.” It becomes how you begin any conversation with the unseen. It becomes how you stand within yourself. It becomes how you take your place at the trunk of the Tree.
Historical Grounding - What the Sources Actually Show
Before we step into practice, we need to be blunt about one thing: medieval Norse sources do not give us grounding exercises in the modern sense. There’s no saga character doing deep breathing or “visualizing roots.” But what the sources do show is a ritual system designed to accomplish the same essential goals: placing the practitioner, shaping the ritual space, focusing the mind, preparing the body, and attuning consciousness for contact with powers beyond the human world. In other words, while the Norse didn’t call it grounding, they absolutely practiced the underlying technology.
When we look at Eiríks saga rauða, we find our most complete example. The völva doesn’t simply sit down and start divining. A special raised platform, the seiðhjallr, is built for her. A high seat is prepared. She arrives in ritual clothing, carrying a staff that marks her authority. Attendants sing varðlokkur (ward songs) to call spirits and stabilize the rite. The community gathers around her. Only after this entire structure is in place does she enter trance and speak prophecy. Everything about this scene tells us the same thing: seiðr required method, preparation, and careful placement within the sacred frame of the world.
Ynglinga saga deepens this understanding by telling us that Freyja taught seiðr to the Æsir and that Óðinn practiced it as well, though the practice carried social stigma for men. This detail is crucial. Anything taught is, by definition, structured. Skills passed from one practitioner to another require method and discipline. Seiðr was not improvised; it was trained.
We see similar preparation reflected in the rune-poems and the story of Odin’s ordeal on Yggdrasil in Hávamál 138 - 165. Odin’s nine night sacrifice is an initiation into the power of galdr - the magical use of voice, breath, rhythm, and intention. You cannot perform galdr effectively without focus. You cannot chant with power while ungrounded. Norse magic relies on the body’s steadiness as much as the mind’s clarity.
The cosmology reinforces this. Grímnismál describes Yggdrasil’s three great roots reaching toward the wells of fate, wisdom, and primal waters. The gods meet at Urðarbrunnr, the Well of Fate, where the Norns wash and shape the threads of wyrd. Sacred groves, ancient trees, and ritual sites described in sources like Adam of Bremen’s account of Uppsala all echo this axis symbolism. Ritual workers gathered around the “world tree” space (physical or symbolic) where the worlds meet. This isn’t grounding as a buzzword; it’s grounding as cosmology.
Taken together, the sources don’t hand us a modern script, but they do provide the bones of a ritual logic: the practitioner is placed intentionally, often elevated or centralized; tools mark identity and boundary; voice and breath shift consciousness; the surrounding environment is treated as cosmologically alive; and the entire sequence moves the practitioner into alignment with the Worlds Tree and the unseen beings connected to it.
What follows in this chapter is a Norse inspired reconstruction built from these elements - faithful to the spirit of the tradition, honest about what is and isn’t attested, and crafted for safe, modern practice. It doesn’t pretend to be a historical reenactment. It’s a living method grounded in mythic logic, ritual structure, and the needs of contemporary seiðr workers.
What ‘Standing’ Really Means in Seiðr
When we talk about “standing” in seiðr, we are not simply describing the position of the legs or the angle of the spine. We are speaking about placement. A very old, very Northern sense of being set in the worlds. In Old Norse sources, to stand is often to be ready, attuned, or aligned. Warriors stand to face the enemy. Gods stand to speak at the Thing. Völur stand to chant, or they sit upon the high seat so that “standing” becomes a state of readiness rather than a literal posture.
To “stand” in seiðr is to know where you are in the great architecture of the cosmos. You are not drifting, not porous, not unmoored. You are located. You occupy your place in the web of wyrd with awareness rather than accident. Your mind may still wander, your emotions may still fluctuate, but beneath all of it there is a sense of footing - a deep, subtle steadiness that lets you reach outward without losing yourself in the reaching.
Standing is the opposite of collapse. It is the opposite of overextension. It is the opposite of being swept away by emotion, trance, spirit presence or your own hopes. Standing is the practitioner’s equilibrium, the posture of someone who is in conversation with the worlds rather than overwhelmed by them.
In this sense, “standing” is a royal posture - not because you claim authority, but because you claim responsibility for your place. When the völva of Eiríks saga rauða mounts the seiðhjallr, she is “placed” there through ritual action. She does not scramble onto it or drift into trance by accident. She is set, supported, sung into readiness. Standing is that readiness.
Standing also means standing in yourself. The Norns spin your thread, but you decide how firmly you hold it. When you stand in seiðr, you are aligned with your own breath, your own will, your own truth. Your senses may soften, your mind may shift into altered perception, but the core of you remains present. You do not vanish into the vision. You walk into it.
This internal stance is as much physical as spiritual. Your weight is evenly distributed. Your breath is anchored low. Your body is neither tense nor slack, but charged with quiet attention. This is why grounding is not optional - the body must be steady in order for the spirit to move without distortion.
In seiðr, standing also places you in relation to the unseen. You are not above the spirits, and you are not beneath them. You stand alongside them, at the place where your thread intersects theirs. It is a posture of mutual respect rather than dominance or submission. When you stand well, the unseen can approach you without fear that you will collapse, cling, overreach or misinterpret.
Standing is also a metaphysical direction. You are oriented toward the Tree - upwards to the gods, sideways to the spirits of land and place, downwards to the ancestors and the deep roots of wyrd. You are not scattered across ten different desires. You are singular, coherent, and placed within the whole.
And finally, standing is an ethical stance. It means you do not take shortcuts in the craft. You do not bypass the laws. You do not search for power while neglecting responsibility. To stand is to be counted - by the worlds, by your ancestors, and by yourself.
This chapter teaches you how to cultivate that posture deliberately. Not by copying ‘Viking’ reenactment gestures or forcing mythic imagery into your practice, but by learning the subtle, lived skills of placement: breath, presence, steadiness, orientation, and the ability to hold your own thread without strain.
When you learn to stand, the craft becomes cleaner.
When you fail to stand, the craft becomes unsafe.
Standing is the first real doorway into deeper seiðr - not because it opens the worlds, but because it makes you ready to enter them.
The Three Roots of Standing Grounding
The idea of “standing” in seiðr is rooted in the cosmology of Yggdrasil, and that means grounding is never just physical. When you place your feet, you are placing yourself in the cosmos. Yggdrasil’s three great roots reach into three wells, and each of these wells becomes part of the internal orientation you’re cultivating. Whether you name them or not, every time you ground, you are interacting with these mythic currents. They form the felt sense of being positioned correctly, and without them seiðr tends to become unstable, performative, or distorted. Standing grounding teaches you to inhabit the same alignment the sources hint at: the practitioner properly placed in body, mind, and fate.
The first root is Urðarbrunnr, the Well of Fate, where the Norns wash and weave wyrd. Grounding through this root isn’t about trying to change your fate but about stepping into right relationship with it. This root lends a sense of inner stability, as if something inside you is settling into its proper orientation. The breath evens, the body grows still, and the mind stops scattering. Many practitioners describe this as the moment they feel “clicked into place,” as though they’ve stepped back into the rhythm that holds their life. This is the aspect of grounding that keeps your work from drifting into projection or fantasy. It reminds you that seiðr is relational, not escapist.
The second root is Mímisbrunnr, the Well of Memory and Wisdom. Grounding through this root connects you not just to lore or intellectual understanding, but to the deeper saturation of instinct and clarity. This is the root that steadies your sight. It brings discernment - the ability to sense when something feels true and when something is simply emotional noise. It also allows your ancestral field to draw close without overwhelming you. This is not about channeling the dead or giving them control; it is about the subtle pressure of support that helps you hold your center. When this root is active, your perceptions don’t feel hurried or grasping. They feel coherent.
The third root is Hvergelmir, the primal source where life force roars into being. This is the grounding many practitioners forget, yet without it the work becomes floaty, dissociated, or unmoored. Rooting through Hvergelmir fills the body with a steady vitality - not excitement or adrenaline, but a quiet strength. It feels like warmth in the legs, depth in the belly, or a subtle hum in the spine. This is what keeps you present enough to hold trance without being swept away by it. Seiðr is a body-centered craft; it cannot be done well if the body is abandoned. Hvergelmir keeps you in the vessel you’re working through.
When these three roots work together, a very specific alignment emerges. You feel rooted without being heavy, alert without tension, receptive without becoming porous, and aligned without rigidness. This is the posture the sagas gesture toward when the völva sits upon the high seat, when Odin hangs from the Tree, and when the gods meet at the Well of Fate. It is the quiet act of placement - the sense that you are exactly where you should be, doing exactly what you are ready for, held between the worlds but not lost in them.
Standing grounding is not something you do before the work. Standing grounding is the first layer of the work itself. Everything else you attempt (chant, seiðr, spá, vision, offering, or communion) rests on these roots. Without them, nothing stands for long.
The Importance of Standing Grounding
Before you reach for seiðr, before you open your senses, before you even whisper a god’s name, you must learn to stand. Not metaphorically - literally and energetically. Standing grounding is the spine of the entire craft. Without it, everything you attempt becomes distorted, fragile or unsafe. With it, every part of the work becomes cleaner, clearer and more sustainable.
Seiðr is not a mental exercise. It is not imagination, daydreaming or drifting upward into airy spiritual space. It is a positional craft. It relies on where you are placed in relation to the land, your body, your ancestry and your fate. If you are ungrounded, the worlds you reach for will not meet you cleanly. You will be speaking into wind. You will be listening through static. And what answers you think you hear may be your own hopes, fears, or wounds echoing back at you.
To be grounded is to be locatable. Spirits can find you. Ancestors can meet you. The gods can approach without having to push through layers of your scattered mind. Ungrounded practitioners feel unreachable - not because the worlds are silent, but because the practitioner is not present enough to be approached.
Centering matters just as deeply. Centering is the act of becoming a singular self rather than a tangled cluster of anxieties, fantasies, half formed impulses, and emotional noise. When you are uncentered, you cannot tell the difference between intuition and projection. You cannot feel the subtle changes in awareness that signal presence. You cannot hold the shifts in consciousness required for seiðr because you are already unsteady before you begin.
Centered practitioners are coherent. The lines of their inner landscape run in the same direction. Their breath, body, intention, and awareness are aligned. When they call, the call is clear. When they listen, they hear without distortion. When they reach, they know exactly what part of themselves is reaching.
Every mythic example we have reinforces this truth. The völva is placed on a high seat (elevated, visible, structured. Odin hangs on the Tree in perfect stillness) placed between worlds, not wandering among them. The gods meet at the Well of Fate because that place grounds their council. Even the rune songs in Hávamál assume a body that is still, breath that is steady, and attention that is sharp enough to hold a single vibrating thread of sound.
Grounding and centering are not optional preliminaries. They are the first layer of protection. They keep you from slipping into fantasy when you should be receiving. They steady your nervous system so trance does not overwhelm you. They anchor your awareness so you do not dissociate or float into unhealthy altered states. They ensure that what you meet in the unseen is true contact, not emotional projection wearing a spiritual mask.
More than that, grounding is a form of respect. You do not approach the gods half present. You do not come to the ancestors scattered and unrooted. You do not reach for the landvættir while mentally spinning. Being grounded is your way of saying: I am here. I am responsible. I am ready to listen. The gods have no interest in chasing someone who cannot hold their own presence. Spirits do not waste effort on someone who is not properly placed. The craft itself withdraws when the vessel is not steady.
If you cannot ground, you are not ready for seiðr. That isn’t judgement - it is reality. Seiðr asks for a body capable of holding presence, a mind capable of staying coherent, and an inner axis capable of supporting altered states. Without grounding and centering, the work becomes dangerous at worst and delusional at best.
But when you are grounded? When you stand fully in yourself, connected downward, aligned inward, open but bounded? The craft unfolds. The gods hear you. The ancestors draw close. The land answers. The unseen becomes a place you can navigate safely. And seiðr becomes what it was always meant to be: not escape, but communion; not fantasy, but perception; not chaos, but a meeting point between the worlds.
Standing grounding is the door you must pass through. Everything before it is preparation. Everything after it depends on whether you walked through that door with your feet on the earth, your breath steady, and your presence intact.
The Dangers of Working Ungrounded
Before anything else is said, let this land clearly: seiðr without grounding is not seiðr. It is daydreaming, dissociation, wishful intuition, or emotional projection wearing a mystical mask. No amount of chant, incense, runes, or ritual clothing can compensate for a practitioner who is not properly placed in themselves. When grounding is missing, everything in the craft begins to warp.
Not because spirits punish you.
Not because the gods strike you down.
But because your own mind becomes the distortion.
Modern people underestimate just how intense consciousness shifting work can be. The sagas assumed grounding because the entire Norse worldview was embodied, land-based, and communally reinforced. We have none of those cultural supports by default. So if you skip grounding, you’re not simply “a little unsteady” - you are spiritually unmoored, psychologically open, and energetically porous. That is where the danger lives.
- Your Mind Fills the Liminal Space With Noise -
When ungrounded, the mind becomes desperate to organize the ambiguity of trance. It doesn’t wait for real contact. It fills the silence with whatever is already inside you:
old wounds
unexamined fears
fantasies
attachments
grief
ego stories
projected desires
internalized voices
and unresolved trauma.
These inner fragments dress themselves up as visions, messages, gods, or ancestors. They feel meaningful because you’re altered, but meaning and accuracy are not the same thing. You cannot tell which impressions arise from genuine contact and which are simply internal echoes. This is how experienced practitioners go off-course without realizing they’ve left the road entirely.
Without grounding, subtle sensory shifts become dramatic. Normal bodily reactions - muscle twitches, temperature changes, the pulse in your ears start feeling like “signs” or “presence.” The mind, already unsteady, interprets noise as revelation.
You become more susceptible to pareidolia, magical thinking, and projection.
A random flash of memory becomes a “past life.”
A wave of emotion becomes “a message.”
A stray thought becomes “intuition.”
Nothing is trustworthy because nothing is filtered through a stable centre.
Trance is a controlled descent. Dissociation is a collapse.
Ungrounded practitioners cannot tell the difference.
Dissociation often feels mystical (floaty, weightless, timeless, numb, vivid) yet it disconnects you from body, reality, and discernment. You’re no longer entering the worlds. You’re being pulled inward into the unprocessed basement of your psyche. What you meet there isn’t spirit. It’s your shadow without context.
This is one of the most dangerous traps because dissociation can masquerade as spiritual depth.
Weak grounding means weak psychic boundaries. This isn’t about horror movie fear - it’s energetic and psychological vulnerability. Unstable practitioners emit an unfiltered “signal”: inconsistent, frantic, hungry, or unfocused. Benevolent spirits tend to step back from that kind of noise. The ancestors wait. The gods remain silent.
But unanchored, wandering, or residual presences (emotional echoes, land-wights you’re not prepared for, or simply the psychic imprint of a place) may drift toward you because they sense an opening.
Not to possess you.
Not to harm you.
But simply because your “door” is wide open and no one is guarding it.
A grounded practitioner can engage safely.
An ungrounded one cannot even tell what’s theirs and what isn’t.
You Misinterpret Everything: Signs, Omens, Impressions. Without grounding, the entire interpretive framework of seiðr collapses. You lose the ability to distinguish between intuition and anxiety, between omen and coincidence, between vision and imagination. You begin to chase “signs” everywhere because your internal compass is spinning.
Ungrounded practitioners often:
Receive contradictory messages
Think every coincidence is divine communication
Develop false callings
Attach to entities that are actually emotional patterns
Mistake exhaustion for divine silence
Mistake divine silence for rejection
All of this damages trust - your trust in the craft, and the unseen’s trust in you.
Your Emotional State Hijacks the Work. If you enter ritual unsteady, your emotions take command.
Anger becomes “guidance.”
Fear becomes “warning.”
Longing becomes “calling.”
Sadness becomes “ancestral grief.”
Anxiety becomes “a message from the gods.”
The gods do not speak clearly through a vessel overwhelmed by their own emotions. They wait. Spirits wait. The craft waits. Only your unchecked inner landscape speaks - and it speaks loudly.
If you repeatedly practice ungrounded, the consequences accumulate:
• Sleep becomes disrupted
• You feel “too open” at random times
• You can’t calm your mind after ritual
• You feel spiritually “buzzed” but not nourished
• You can’t tell what’s real anymore
• The unseen feels distant or hostile
• Your confidence collapses
• Everyday life starts to feel foggy or unreal
• You become exhausted after even small workings
• You get spooked, overwhelmed, or hypervigilant
• You question the entire craft
This is not “initiation sickness.”
It is the slow destabilization caused by doing spiritual work without a spine.
You’re not just risking yourself - you’re risking the integrity of the tradition you’re trying to practice. Ungrounded practitioners spread misinformation, mistake personal visions for cosmic truth, and create confusion in others. They speak with spiritual authority they haven’t earned. They present distorted impressions as real experiences. They confuse seekers and dilute the clarity of the path.
Seiðr does not tolerate sloppiness. Wyrd does not reward disorientation. The gods will not pour clean water into a cracked cup.
Grounding Is Not Optional. It Is the Gatekeeper. Grounding makes you:
• sane
• clear
• stable
• discerning
• receptive
• safe
• trustworthy
It allows you to hear without distortion, perceive without panic, and engage without collapsing. Grounding makes you someone the gods can approach. Someone the ancestors can stand beside. Someone who can handle the subtle reality of the unseen without turning it into a projection of their own inner chaos.
Without grounding, seiðr is fantasy.
With grounding, seiðr becomes craft.
What Grounding Feels Like
For many practitioners, grounding begins as a checklist: place your feet, breathe deeper, imagine roots, calm yourself down. But true standing grounding is far more than a technique. It is a shift in state. It has texture, weight and presence. You don’t think about grounding; you become grounded. Your body, breath and awareness fall into alignment in a way that is unmistakable once you’ve felt it. The purpose isn’t to visualize roots or recite steps. The purpose is to return to yourself so fully that the worlds can finally meet you without distortion.
The first change is physical. Your weight settles naturally, as though gravity finally remembers you. Your legs feel anchored, not heavy in a tired way but steady like a rooted tree. The spine rises without effort, as if pulled into right alignment by something older than habit. Your jaw loosens, your belly softens, your shoulders lower. You are no longer holding yourself together through tension. You are simply held. This quiet settling is the body saying, finally.
Then the mind shifts. A grounded mind doesn’t go blank; it becomes single. Thoughts stop ricocheting. They arrange themselves in a line. The hum of scattered worries fades, leaving space that feels clean and breathable. You’re not forcing clarity - clarity arrives on its own. Distractions don’t disappear, but they stop pulling. Background noise stays in the background. Your own inner voice becomes audible again.
The breath follows. In grounding, breath stops being something you “do.” It becomes a rhythm that orders everything else. Inhales draw steadiness up the spine; exhales settle you deeper into your stance. Breath becomes the metronome of the work. If your breath is shallow, frantic or uneven, you are not grounded yet. When grounding arrives, the breath tells you without ambiguity.
Awareness shifts next, and this part is subtle. You become more alert and more relaxed at the same time. You feel the room around you with new precision: temperature, space, sound, emotional atmosphere. Nothing overwhelms you, but nothing escapes you either. You are the still point inside a widening circle. You’re not bracing; you’re ready.
Boundaries also become perceptible, not imagined. Grounded, you can feel where you end and the world begins. Your edges become defined. You are receptive but not porous. Contact with spirits or ancestors becomes safe because you are not leaking, floating or split. You stand as a coherent self, not a sponge.
Then intuition deepens. When grounding is real, your inner sense no longer whispers faintly beneath anxiety. It becomes a steady presence beside you: older, calmer, clearer. You feel its depth. You feel its honesty. This is the part of you that can hold seiðr without breaking or distorting the message. This is the voice that isn’t ruled by ego or fear.
Time shifts momentarily. It slows - not literally, but internally. Moments feel fuller, the present feels thicker. You stop rushing. This is essential for trance work. Altered states require a loosening of time, but without grounding that loosening becomes dissociation. Grounding moves you into slow time while keeping you completely in your body.
Eventually, the whole state clicks. Every practitioner describes this in their own way, but the experience is shared: something inside aligns. You feel seated even when standing. You feel placed even when alone. You feel findable. The worlds can see you clearly. The gods can hear you cleanly. You are ready to approach the work not in fragments but in coherence.
This is standing grounding. Not a metaphor, not an idea - an actual shift in your being. A change in the texture of your presence. A return to the roots that lets the branch work of seiðr begin.
Skipping this step is one of the most common causes of distortion, fantasy and confusion. Honouring it is one of the clearest markers of maturity in the craft.
Common Mistakes (and Their Corrections)
Grounding feels simple until you try to do it with real intention. Most of the problems practitioners face later in seiðr begin right here, in these early moments when presence is supposed to settle into the body. The mistakes people make are almost universal, and the good news is that every single one of them is correctable. Once corrected, everything in the craft becomes steadier. Think of these not as failures but as signals pointing you toward a stronger and clearer alignment.
One of the most common misunderstandings is confusing relaxation with grounding. Many people sit down, breathe a little, feel the tension leave their shoulders, and assume they are grounded. But calm is not grounding. Calm can happen in dissociation, in fantasy, in moments where you are barely present. Grounding is something else entirely. Grounding feels heavy, clear, and locatable. The body has weight. The mind is aware of the physical world. The spine feels like a vertical line rather than soft fog. If grounding feels blurry, it isn’t grounding; it’s simply relaxation. The correction is simple: shift your attention from feeling calm to feeling located. Press your feet into the floor. Notice the room. Find your spine. Presence comes first; calm comes second.
Another mistake is floating upward instead of rooting downward. The moment people begin spiritual work, many instinctively lift their awareness into their head, drifting into imagination, visualisation, and abstract thought. This upward drift creates spiritual vertigo. The more you rise, the more unstable you become. You lose the capacity to hold trance because you were already unanchored before you began. Correcting this means anchoring the breath low in the body. Let the lower belly rise with the inhale. Feel the legs. Feel the weight in your hips. If you can sense your body below the navel more than you sense activity in your forehead, you are grounding rather than drifting.
A related problem is the habit of forcing imagery. People try so hard to “see roots” or “visualize the Tree” that they accidentally pull themselves out of their body entirely. Forced imagery is fantasy, and fantasy disconnects you from the work. When visualization becomes strained, it’s a sign that sensation needs to take precedence. Instead of picturing roots, ask yourself what heaviness feels like. What warmth feels like. What your seat feels like beneath you. Grounding does not need to be seen. It needs to be felt.
Breath is another place where people falter. They get caught up in posture, in visualization, in ritual structure, and forget the simplest mechanism of grounding: slow, steady breathing. Without breath, nothing stabilizes. When people drift, it’s almost always because the breath has risen into the chest or sped up without them noticing. The nine-breath rhythm is enough to reset everything. Inhale, pause, exhale, repeat. Breath is the great anchor. Any time your grounding slips, come back to it.
One of the most dangerous errors is trying to open before you are grounded. Expanding your awareness while your axis is shaky turns you porous. You start interpreting emotion as omen, imagination as presence, inner turbulence as contact. This is how distortions begin. The fix is simple but non-negotiable: do not open until your body feels heavy, your edges feel defined, your breath is steady, and your awareness is fully in your body. The order matters. Ground first. Then open.
Some practitioners ground only physically and forget the cosmological layer entirely. You can sit still, breathe deeply, feel your feet, and still not be placed in relation to wyrd, the land, the roots, and the axis of Yggdrasil. Grounding in seiðr is always relational. Without that relationship, grounding becomes shallow and unstable. The simplest correction is to bring even one relational truth into awareness: that you stand in right relationship with the land, the roots, the worlds. This alone deepens grounding from a physical exercise into an act of placement.
Posture also sabotages many people. Slouching collapses the axis; rigid straightening strains it. Either way, you lose the trunk of the Tree. The spine must be long, steady, and relaxed. Imagine being lifted from above and rooted from below. Shoulders loose. Neck soft. This alignment creates an inner pathway that seiðr can move through cleanly.
Emotion can also confuse the early stages of grounding. People sit down, begin to settle, and suddenly feel a wave of anxiety, excitement, sadness, or anticipation. They assume this means something mystical is happening. Often, it’s just the nervous system finally slowing down enough to reveal the noise underneath. You don’t need to interpret these emotions. Label them gently (“this is anxiety,” “this is anticipation”) and let them drain downward through the breath.
Rushing the process is another subtle mistake. Many people try to ground quickly so they can “get to the real work,” but grounding is part of the real work. If you try to force a mystical feeling within seconds, you’re performing, not preparing. The correction is simply time. Give grounding the minutes it needs. The deeper the roots, the more stable the trance.
And finally, many treat grounding as a one-and-done step. They ground for a moment, feel “good enough,” and move on. Minutes later, they are overwhelmed, drifting, or dissociating. Grounding is not permanent; it is a state that shifts as consciousness shifts. You must return to it throughout the work: before opening, during intensity, after receiving, and while closing. The best practitioners re-ground repeatedly. It becomes a rhythm, not a checkbox.
Every one of these mistakes points to the same truth: grounding is presence. Not imagery, not calm, not belief, not performance. Presence. When grounding is corrected, everything else in the craft becomes cleaner, safer, and more precise. And once you truly know how standing grounding feels, you will recognise instantly when you’ve drifted, and your entire practice will strengthen because of it.
Practice - Centering and Grounding with Yggdrasil
Step by Step, Root to Crown
Grounding in the Norse frame isn’t about “plugging in” to the earth like an electrical cord. It’s about placement. This rite places you in the cosmic architecture of Yggdrasil: rooted in what holds you, centered in your agency, and opened in a way that is both receptive and protected. It prepares your body, your luck, your voice, and your presence for any work that touches the unseen.
Use it as a daily discipline (10 - 20 minutes) or a formal prelude before seiðr, spá, galdr, ancestor work, or devotional practice (20 - 40 minutes).
Materials -
Choose the simplest set that feels true:
A seat, cushion, or slightly raised “high seat” with a dedicated cloth
A staff, walking stick, or symbolic wand
A stone (earth/root), a bowl of water (well/fate), and a candle or lamp (upper worlds)
Optional: an Eihwaz rune token (ᛇ)
A small offering: water, bread, a sip of mead, or sincere words
Phase I - Establish the Vé (Sacred Space)
1. Mark the place
Sit or stand with the stone at your feet, the water to your left, and the candle to your right. If using a cloth “high seat,” place it beneath you and settle so your spine can rise naturally.
2. Name your intention
Quietly speak:
“I stand at the roots of Yggdrasil.
I align with right order and frith.
I open to wisdom fit for me, in right measure, with good guidance.”
This places the work inside a Norse ethical container rather than an open void.
3. Simple hallowing
Touch stone, touch water, warm your hands over flame. Say:
“Roots, Wells, and Branches, hold me true.”
A modern action, but fully lore-consistent.
Phase II - Place the Body (Centering)
4. Adopt the axis
Let your body take the shape of the Tree:
feet grounded; pelvis heavy; spine long; crown light.
5. Breathe by nines
Inhale 4, hold 1, exhale 4 - nine cycles.
Jaw soft. Belly soft. Shoulders loose.
This steadiness is what the sagas imply when they show ritual specialists preparing for altered states.
6. Set the staff
Hold the staff vertically or rest it before you.
If none is used, place one hand over the other at your lower belly.
This becomes your tactile “trunk.”
Phase III - Rooting (Grounding)
7. Grow the roots
With each exhale, imagine spreading down through soil and stone.
Let the body become heavier, calmer, quieter.
8. Touch the wells
Let your roots meet the three mythic currents:
Urðarbrunnr: right action, frith, the web well-kept
Mímisbrunnr: memory, wisdom, counsel
Hvergelmir: primal vitality, raw becoming
You are not draining them. You are aligning.
9. Offer a word
Say softly:
“Norns, keep my place.
Mímir, temper my sight.
Primal deep, strengthen me without excess.”
Phase IV - Align the Trunk (Centering Into Agency)
10. Gather at the heart
Bring awareness to the chest.
Visualize a steady ember - your hamingja, your luck and presence.
11. Become the bridge
Feel your spine as the living axis of the Tree.
Below and above meet in you.
If thoughts arise, let them slide downward, out through the roots.
12. Seal with stillness
Take three sets of nine slow breaths.
If you drift, touch the stone or press your feet into the floor to anchor back.
Phase V - Open the Branches (Bounded Receptivity)
13. Unfurl upward
Let awareness rise along throat, brow, and crown.
Not leaving the body; widening within it.
14. Begin galdr
Tone Eihwaz (ᛇ) - a sustained, comfortable sound such as ehh / ee-wahz.
Nine tones
Rest
Nine more
The vibration unifies breath, voice, and attention - the oldest Norse method of shifting consciousness.
15. Set the boundary
Say clearly:
“Only those aligned with good order and right relationship may approach.”
This echoes the protective function of varðlokkur (ward-songs).
Phase VI - Listening at the Tree (Optional Contact)
16. Listen, don’t chase
Remain still for a few minutes. Notice impressions, sensations, presence.
If someone draws near (god, ancestor, landwight), greet with respect.
Ask short questions; receive short answers.
17. Confirm (runes optional)
Draw a single rune:
“What do I most need to carry back?”
Set interpretation aside for after closing.
Phase VII - Closing and Grounding Back
18. Release the chant
Let the voice fall to a hum, then to silence.
Gather awareness back to trunk… back to roots… back to body.
19. Thank and give
Pour a few drops of water to earth or bowl, or offer small food or sincere words:
“Thank you for what was given.
What is not for me, let it pass on.”
20. Seal the body
Press feet into ground.
Touch the stone.
Splash a little water on hands or brow.
Eat a small bite of ordinary food.
The body completes the rite.
21. Record and reflect
Write date, intention, chant duration, impressions, rune (if drawn).
Patterns emerge over time - how long you need to settle, which breathing cadence works best, how your sense of presence shifts with practice.
Safety, Ethics, and Troubleshooting
Rooted practice is stable practice. Even in the sagas, power is always paired with discipline, presence, and wise boundaries. What follows isn’t fear-based — it's the kind of practical steadiness that keeps the work clean, sustainable, and safe.
If you feel dizzy, unsteady, or overwhelmed -
Trance and chanting shift breath, heart rate, and attention. If anything becomes too intense:
Stop the chant immediately.
Open your eyes fully.
Press both feet firmly into the floor.
Take a slow, deep breath through the nose and exhale out the mouth.
Eat something grounding - a bite of bread, nuts, chocolate or anything salty or sweet.
Name three ordinary things in the room: “Chair. Window. Blanket.”
This brings awareness back into the sensory present and reanchors the nervous system.
If intrusive or unsettling presences appear -
Even with boundaries, the unseen can sometimes lean closer than invited.
Restate your boundary aloud, clearly.
Blow out the candle or extinguish the flame.
Physically step out of the ritual space or stand up and move.
End the rite cleanly: “This session is closed.”
You can always return later. Retreating is not failure - it’s responsible.
Pace and proportion (the sagas agree: don’t sprint) -
In the historical material, practitioners prepared deliberately, repeated disciplines often, and did not rush into the deeper work untempered.
Keep sessions short at first: 10–20 minutes is plenty.
Increase duration gradually.
Even experienced practitioners benefit from shorter, intentional sessions rather than dramatic marathons.
Consistency matters more than intensity.
Community as stabilizer -
In Eiríks saga rauða, the völva does not act alone - assistants sing the varðlokkur, anchoring and supporting her trance.
Practicing with trusted companions can steady breath, sound, and presence.
Group grounding tends to deepen focus while providing a safety net.
Never work with people who undermine your boundaries or pressure you into deeper states than you can safely hold.
Ethical presence: alignment before ambition -
Do not use this practice to pry into others lives, seek power over them or feed anxiety. Grounding and centering exist to create clarity and alignment - not to amplify unexamined desire or fear.
Keep your motivations clean.
Ask for what you need, not what you want to control.
Remember: return (skuld) flows through every action, including spiritual seeking.
Health disclaimer -
This work is not a replacement for mental health care, medical treatment or trauma therapy.
If you live with trauma, dissociation, panic episodes, or chronic fatigue:
Shorten the rite.
Increase sensory grounding (touch, sound, weight, temperature).
Reduce visualization.
Work with a clinician who affirms your spiritual practice.
Never force yourself deeper into trance; slow is stable.
Your wellbeing is the foundation of all seiðr-craft. There is no virtue in pushing past your own limits.
Living Grounded
Living grounded is not a spiritual mood you enter only before ritual. It is a posture you return to throughout your day, a way of being placed in your own life so consistently that the craft can trust you. Grounding stops being something you “do” and becomes something you “are” - a quiet firmness beneath everything. The more this way of being settles into your bones, the cleaner your seiðr becomes, the steadier your intuition feels, and the easier it is for the unseen to meet you without friction.
In everyday life, living grounded looks deceptively simple. It’s the moment you bring your breath back into your belly before answering a difficult message. It’s the pause before reacting, the awareness of your spine during conflict, the steadying of your feet before making a choice with consequence. It’s remembering that you have a center and choosing to inhabit it rather than letting circumstances yank you around by the nervous system. People who live grounded tend to feel calmer, clearer, and harder to throw off balance, but not because their lives are easier. They’re just rooted.
Emotionally, grounding gives you the ability to feel without being overwhelmed. Instead of drowning in anger, grief, excitement, or fear, you experience the feeling while staying connected to the deeper currents beneath it. You don’t become cold or detached; you become anchored. This is vital for seiðr practitioners, because trance amplifies emotion. If you cannot hold yourself in daily life, you will not hold yourself in altered states. Living grounded creates the emotional structure needed to navigate both the ordinary and the unseen without fraying.
Energetically, grounding is what keeps your field coherent. You don’t leak attention everywhere; you don’t absorb the moods of others uncontrollably; you don’t blur your edges. Your presence develops a certain density - not heaviness, but integrity. Spirits, ancestors, and gods tend to respond more clearly to grounded people because grounded people feel “real” to them. When you stand in yourself, you are easier to perceive and easier to work with. This is the difference between sending out a flickering signal and a steady beacon.
Spiritually, living grounded creates a stable container for growth. The more rooted you are, the more depth you can safely hold. Your practice becomes consistent rather than dramatic, sustainable rather than exhausting. You stop needing constant signs or intense experiences to feel connected; your connection is woven into the way you move through the world. This is how seiðr becomes integrated instead of compartmentalized. When grounding becomes habitual, the craft no longer exists only on your altar or inside your rituals - it lives in your breath, your steps, your voice, your choices.
Living grounded also shapes how you relate to others. You listen more deeply. You speak more intentionally. You hold boundaries without aggression and compassion without self-loss. Your presence becomes something people can lean against, and that steadiness quietly affects your relationships, your work, and your way of navigating conflict. This is not about becoming stoic or distant; it’s about becoming someone who doesn’t get thrown off course every time the wind changes.
Most importantly, living grounded strengthens your relationship with the unseen. You approach the gods without scattering. You meet the ancestors without dissolving. You walk the land with your feet truly on it. The more grounded you are, the more porous your listening becomes without losing structure. Grounding gives you the dignity of meeting the worlds as an equal - not as a desperate seeker, not as a frightened novice, but as someone who stands properly placed.
Over time, grounding becomes a habit that escorts you everywhere: at your desk, in your kitchen, in your car, during conversations, in quiet moments, in hard decisions, and in every ritual you ever perform. It is the thread that runs beneath your entire life, the root that keeps every other part of the craft upright. Living grounded means you are no longer waiting for stability to arrive from outside. You generate it from within.
When grounding becomes a lifestyle, seiðr stops being something you struggle to enter. It becomes something that flows from the person you have become.