Seiðr Craft - Chapter 5: Sannindi - Truth
In the old tongue, sannindi means truth, proof and reality itself - not the soft truth of opinion, but the hard truth that stands when illusion falls away. In Seiðr, sannindi is the line between vision and delusion, between prophecy and fantasy. It is the discipline that keeps the seer honest - with the gods, with the spirits, and above all with themselves.
Odin did not seek knowledge for ease. He hung upon Yggdrasil nine nights, pierced and starving, to win the runes. He gave an eye at Mímir’s well to see more deeply. He chose truth over comfort, clarity over blindness. This is the example every Seiðr worker must follow: to see what is, not merely what one wishes to be.
Truth in Seiðr is not found through intellect alone. It lives in the body, in instinct, in the quiet pulse beneath thought. It is the voice that rises when all other voices fall silent. When the völva enters trance, countless forms approach - memories, ancestors, gods, deceivers. Only sannindi allows her to know which is which.
Those who refuse truth twist their sight. They become lost in their own reflections, mistaking the echo for the source. Without sannindi, even strong boundaries and good intentions cannot hold. The craft becomes theatre and the spirits you serve become masks of your own desire.
Truth is not cruelty. It is the deep water that purifies. To hold sannindi is to accept what the web of wyrd shows you (pleasant or not) and to let that knowing shape your action.
This chapter will explore how truth is sought, recognised and maintained in Seiðr:
how to test vision, interpret omen, challenge illusion and remain grounded in honesty even when revelation wounds the heart.
Truth in the Lore
Truth in the old lore was never gentle. The Norse did not mistake truth for comfort, nor confuse honesty with ease. In the Eddas and sagas, to seek truth was to risk the self, to face what is woven whether it blesses or breaks you. Truth was not a luxury; it was a demand placed upon those who dared to see.
In Völuspá, the Seeress speaks to Odin without flattery. She tells him not what he wishes to hear, but what he must: the world will burn, the gods will die and the age of men will fall into shadow. She does not soften her tone or conceal the ruin to come. She names the truth of Ragnarök plainly, not as punishment but as inevitability. Her gift is not prophecy that soothes, but vision that prepares. In this, she embodies sannindi - truth above all, even when it wounds.
Odin himself shows what truth demands. At Mímisbrunnr, the well of memory and wisdom, he sacrifices his own eye for deeper sight. He does not barter for comfort or illusion. He pays with pain and loss so that he might see more clearly. To look into the waters of Mímir is to see the cost of knowledge - it asks for part of yourself in exchange. The Allfather accepts, and in doing so becomes the keeper of truth both glorious and grim.
In Hávamál, when Odin recounts the rune songs he discovered upon the tree, he names them as they are: powers to heal, to protect, to bind, to curse, to raise the dead, to quench fire, to calm seas, to silence weapons. Nowhere does he call them safe. Nowhere does he hide their danger behind soft words. To name a thing truly is to see its nature entire, its light and its shadow alike. That is truth in the Norse mind: clear, exact, without adornment.
The old ones knew that truth was a blade. It cuts illusion from insight, falsehood from power and self deception from wisdom. To speak truth is to risk the comfort of ignorance; to see truth is to surrender the sweetness of lies. The Völva, the God, the runemaster - all pay this price willingly.
So it is in Seiðr. The visions may dazzle, the voices may charm, but without sannindi they are only dreams. The craft does not ask that you be comfortable; it asks that you be honest. Truth in Seiðr is often difficult, but it is never optional.
Why Truth Matters
When you sit in seiðr, what you see will not always be glorious. The unseen does not shape itself for your comfort. It shows what is, not what you wish to be. Sometimes, what rises before you is not the vision of gods or heroes, but your own reflection - your fears, your pride, your hidden wounds. Sometimes, it is the harsh reality of another’s wyrd, a thread tangled with sorrow or loss that you cannot undo. And sometimes, there is only silence, a vast stillness that offers no voice, no image, no sign. That silence too is truth. The temptation in those moments is to fill the emptiness with your own invention - to create a story, to please your audience, or to convince yourself that something has happened. But this is where most practitioners fall: not through ignorance, but through the fear of nothingness.
In the old way, truth was not a luxury. It was a discipline - as sacred as the staff, as necessary as breath. Truth matters because it anchors the craft in what is real. Without it, even the most beautiful vision rots into falsehood.
Self deception is the first poison. If you lie to yourself, you will never know whether the voices you hear are spirits or shadows of your own making. You will twist signs to fit your desires and call every impulse divine. The mind becomes its own trickster, feeding you what you want instead of what you need. Seiðr cannot survive such rot. The first test of every practitioner is honesty: why do you seek? Whom do you serve? What are you avoiding? Until these are answered truthfully, every vision will be coloured by denial.
Flattery is the second poison. Once you begin to work for others, the pressure to comfort them will grow. People crave certainty and they crave good news. They want to hear that their path is blessed, that their lost love will return, that the gods favour their plans. If you give them only sweetness, you are no longer a seer - you are an entertainer. The völva’s duty is to truth, not approval. The old seeresses did not bend their words to please chieftains or kings; they spoke what was woven, even if it foretold ruin. In this, they served the highest form of compassion - not to spare others from pain, but to prepare them to meet it with strength.
Delusion is the third poison. It comes when the line between vision and fantasy blurs, when you begin to believe every whisper is divine, every symbol sacred, every emotion a message. Each untruth you permit becomes a knot in the web of wyrd you are weaving. The more you weave without care, the more tangled the pattern becomes, until your work begins to collapse under its own weight. Falsehood does not only mislead others - it ensnares you. It consumes your power, distorts your reputation and weakens your hamingja, the store of your spiritual strength and honour.
Truth, then, is not a single act but a way of walking. It demands awareness in every stage of the craft: when you open, when you see, when you speak and when you interpret. Truth requires humility - to admit when you do not know, to confess when the vision is unclear, to accept when the silence is real. Silence itself is a sacred teacher. It teaches patience, discernment and the courage to resist invention.
The gods themselves respect truth. Odin did not flinch before the prophecy of his death. He did not curse the völva for speaking it. He listened, learned and prepared. Freyja, in her own mysteries, teaches truth of another kind - the truth of feeling, of deep emotion unmasked, of the heart’s raw honesty. The Norse understood that truth has many faces, but all of them demand courage.
To sit in seiðr is to hold a mirror up to the fabric of existence. Sometimes you will see beauty, sometimes decay, but always the truth of what is. To turn away from that truth is to abandon the craft itself. For Seiðr is not the art of seeing what you wish - it is the art of witnessing what is woven.
Truth matters because it is the light by which you navigate the mists. It is the thread that keeps your work aligned with wyrd. It keeps your visions clean, your counsel worthy, your spirit intact. Without truth, every gift becomes corruption, every revelation a lie, every act of magic a shadow of what it might have been.
To walk the staff road with honour is to walk with eyes open, even when what you see breaks your heart. For it is better to see clearly and ache, than to live forever in a dream that never was.
The Dangers of Ignoring Truth
The dangers of ignoring truth in Seiðr are deep and quiet, like rot beneath the bark. They begin in subtle ways (a small distortion, a half truth, a refusal to face what is unpleasant) but they end in ruin. Truth is the spine of the craft, the pillar that holds the seer upright between the worlds. Without it, the work becomes hollow, its power unmoored. Many who begin this path with passion and sincerity are undone not by wickedness, but by comfort. They trade truth for ease, precision for beauty, clarity for reassurance. Yet Seiðr, like the gods who shaped it, cannot be deceived for long. The web of wyrd answers every lie with silence.
The first danger is projection: the subtle, creeping habit of mistaking your own thoughts, desires and fears for revelation. It happens to every practitioner at some point. You sit in trance and the veil opens - but instead of true sight, what rises is a reflection of yourself. You see what you hope to see or what you dread. The mind, eager to make sense of mystery, paints its own images and calls them visions. When you long for recognition, you might hear a god tell you you are chosen. When you fear rejection, you might see omens of betrayal. The visions are not false in feeling, but they are born of you, not beyond you. Without discernment, the seer’s inner world becomes a hall of mirrors, each reflection shining back their own face. The danger is not imagination (imagination is sacred) but the failure to know when you are looking into your own reflection instead of the deep well of the unseen.
Then comes false prophecy. It often begins in innocence, even kindness. Someone comes to you for counsel and you feel their fear or grief. You wish to ease it, to give them hope. The truth you’ve seen may be heavy or incomplete, so you soften it, twist it slightly, or fill the silence with comfort. Perhaps you tell them what they long to hear. It feels merciful in the moment, but it is not. In Seiðr, words are not decoration - they are deeds. A prophecy spoken becomes part of the web itself. Falsehoods ripple outward, shaping choices, binding others in misdirection. You may not see the harm at first, but it grows. Sooner or later, your words lose their power, for the craft itself no longer trusts you as its voice.
The third danger is loss of credibility - the spiritual decay that follows every compromise. In the Norse world, truth and honour were bound together. When a person’s word could no longer be trusted, their hamingja (their spiritual might and reputation) weakened. The same is true for the seer. Each time you bend truth, a thread of your strength frays. Those who once came to you for wisdom sense the emptiness behind your words. The spirits who once walked beside you drift away, leaving only echoes. Even the gods grow silent, for they do not confide in those who speak falsely. The völva’s power rests not in grandeur or beauty, but in trust - the trust of others, of the spirits and of the web itself. When that trust is broken, power seeps away like blood into snow.
The final danger is the collapse of the craft. This is the point at which a seer no longer practises Seiðr at all, though they may still believe they do. The rites continue, the staff still rises, the chants still fill the air, but the connection is gone. Without truth, the thread between worlds frays until it snaps. What remains is performance - the shadow of a sacred act, not its living soul. The seer becomes lost in the echo of their own invention. The visions are hollow, the power thin, the meaning gone. It is not punishment. It is simply consequence. Seiðr cannot flow through deceit any more than water can flow through sand.
To ignore truth is to drift into the fog, to lose the road home. The web of wyrd is woven from reality, not wishful thought and when you deny reality, you cut yourself out of that weave. The gods do not destroy those who lie; they simply turn away. The spirits grow distant. The world grows quiet. What was once vibrant becomes empty.
The practice of Seiðr requires courage - not just the courage to travel between worlds, but the courage to see things as they are. It is not easy to face what you find. Truth can be brutal, stripping away illusions that have comforted you for years. It can reveal your own faults, your hidden motives, the harm your power may cause. It will humble you, often painfully. But it will also free you. For when you see truth clearly, your work becomes clean again. Your words regain their weight. Your name gathers honour once more and the spirits recognise your strength.
The völva’s task has never been to please or to console. It is to see and to speak what is real. To ignore truth is to betray that calling and to betray yourself. The gods do not ask that you be perfect - only that you be honest. For in honesty lies alignment, and in alignment lies power.
When truth is honoured, the staff becomes steady again, the song regains its depth and the web welcomes you back. But until then, every lie is a thread you must untangle before you can walk the path once more.
In Practice: Living Sannindi
In practice, living sannindi means shaping your entire craft around truth - not as an abstract ideal, but as a daily act of discipline. It is the thread that holds every working together. Seiðr demands honesty not only in speech, but in intent, in perception and in the way you hold yourself before the unseen. Truth is not a thing you find once; it is a thing you keep choosing.
Begin by declaring intent honestly. Before you open the staff road, pause and ask yourself why you are doing this work. Say it aloud if you can. Are you seeking wisdom? Healing? Guidance? Or is there hunger behind it - a wish for power, revenge, or recognition? Do not lie to yourself, even about motives you would rather not name. To speak the truth of your intention does not condemn you; it reveals where you stand. There are times when you will realise that your intent is not fit for the work - that your emotions are too raw, or your desire too sharp. That realisation itself is Seiðr, for it shows you the truth before the spirits do. Better to turn back in honesty than to move forward in delusion.
Keep a working record without embellishment. The journal of a seer is not meant to impress others; it is a mirror for the self. Write what you see, even when it feels plain or disappointing. Some visions will be powerful and vivid; others will be fragments, colours or silence. Record them exactly as they are. Resist the urge to make them grander or more beautiful. The gods do not need your embroidery, only your accuracy. Over time, you will begin to see patterns and truths that only emerge through consistency. Many seers lose their clarity not through lack of power, but through rewriting their own experiences to match what they wish had happened. The record keeps you honest.
Learn to separate perception from interpretation. During trance, you will receive impressions - sights, sounds, sensations, words half heard, shapes glimpsed. Record these raw perceptions first, exactly as they arrived. Only after the rite is done should you move to interpretation, where you ask: what might this mean? The two steps must not mix. When you let meaning overwrite experience too soon, the imagination reshapes the message, adding what it wants to find. By keeping them distinct, you protect the integrity of what was given. You become a true witness, not an editor of the unseen.
Finally, be honest with others. When you speak what you have seen, let your words be as clear and steady as the vision itself. If what you saw was uncertain, say so. If the image was faint or fragmented, do not pretend it was whole. If what you saw was harsh or painful, speak it with compassion but do not soften it into false comfort. The völva’s task is not to charm the heart but to bring truth to light. To add what was not there or to hide what was is to twist the wyrd you were entrusted to reveal.
To live sannindi is to become a vessel of clarity. It means facing your motives without denial, recording your work without vanity, discerning truth without haste, and speaking it without deceit. The practice will humble you; it will also make your Seiðr strong. For when you move with honesty, the gods draw near, the spirits listen and the craft itself recognises you as one of its own.
Exercises
Exercises in sannindi are not about perfecting your visions, but about refining your honesty. They teach you to see clearly, speak carefully and know yourself before you claim to know the unseen. Each practice below is a way of aligning your sight with truth - of turning your inner mirror until it reflects cleanly, without distortion or vanity.
Exercise 1: Vision Journal -
After every session, record your experiences with precision. Divide your page into two columns: Perception and Interpretation. In the first column, write exactly what you experienced - the images, sounds, sensations, emotions or impressions that arose. Do not explain or analyse, simply record. In the second column, write what you think those experiences might mean. Be honest about where the meaning comes from: is it your own reasoning, or something revealed in trance? Over time, compare what you wrote with what later proved true. You will begin to notice how your desires or fears colour your interpretations. The goal is not to erase interpretation, but to recognise when it bends the truth.
Exercise 2: Shadow Inquiry -
Light a candle and place before you the rune ᚲ (Kenaz), the torch - the flame of illumination and creative fire. Gaze softly into the flame and chant the rune’s sound nine times, drawing your breath deep and slow. Ask aloud, “What truth am I avoiding?” Let the question linger. The answer may come as a thought, an image, a feeling or a single word. Write whatever arises, without censoring or judging. Do not seek to correct or polish it; the rawness of the answer is the beginning of honesty. This exercise is not about confession, but revelation - shining the torch of Kenaz into the corners of your own mind where denial hides.
Exercise 3: The Three Gates Test -
Before you speak a vision, omen, or prophecy to another, pass it through the three gates of truth. Ask first: Is it true? Did you genuinely see it, without invention or assumption? If the vision is uncertain, it is not yet ready to be spoken. Ask next: Is it needful? Will these words serve the other person’s growth, understanding, or safety, or are they spoken only to impress or disturb? Finally, ask: Is it rightful? Do you have the authority or permission to share this truth? Not every revelation is yours to tell. Some are meant to be carried in silence until the right moment or not spoken at all. If any gate answers “no,” hold your peace. Silence, when born of integrity, is a form of truth in itself.
Through these exercises, you train not only your sight, but your conscience. You learn that truth is not a single act, but a lifelong practice - a discipline that sharpens your craft, steadies your will and earns the trust of gods and spirits alike.
Reflection
Reflection is the quiet part of Seiðr, the space where wisdom takes root. It is not enough to learn the laws or perform the rites; you must also look inward and see where untruth hides within yourself. Every seer must face the simple fact that deception begins long before a single word is spoken - it begins in the small places where we refuse to see what is. Sit with these questions slowly. Let them work through you like water through soil.
Where in your life do you most often deceive yourself?
Think of the stories you tell to make things bearable - the excuses, the half truths, the careful forgetting. These are the places where sight grows dim. The clearer you can see your own illusions, the less power they have over your craft.
Which truths about your wyrd do you avoid facing?
Every person carries a pattern - the shape of their fate, their strengths, their repeating lessons. Some threads we celebrate; others we turn away from. What part of your path do you pretend is not there? What patterns keep returning because you refuse to name them?
When was the last time you spoke words to please someone rather than to tell them what was real?
Truth has a cost, especially when it wounds. Yet every time you choose comfort over clarity, you weaken the power of your word. The seer’s voice must be trusted - by others, by spirits, by the web itself. Examine the moments when you softened your speech or hid behind politeness. What did that choice take from your strength?
How do you handle silence - with patience, or by filling it with invention?
Silence is part of truth. It is the space where deeper understanding gathers. But many cannot bear it. They rush to fill the stillness with explanations, symbols and noise. Ask yourself whether you can let the silence stand, or whether you fear it. For how you meet silence will reveal how you meet truth itself.
These questions have no single answer. They are not meant to shame or punish, but to open. Each honest response you uncover strengthens your alignment with sannindi. Each illusion you dissolve clears the way for vision. Truth does not demand perfection; it asks only that you look (truly look) and refuse to turn away.
Sannindi is the fire that burns away illusion. It does not flatter or soothe; it cleanses. It is not always gentle, but it is always necessary. Without it, the staff leads you into shadow; with it, the staff becomes a torch that lights the road ahead. The seer who walks without truth is like one who travels through fog, mistaking every glimmer for the sun. But the one who carries truth walks through darkness with steady sight.
To walk the staff road of Seiðr is to accept what you see, even when it wounds. It is to look as Odin looked - into the depths of Mímisbrunnr, knowing the price would be his own eye. It is to hang upon Yggdrasil in search of knowledge, enduring pain for revelation. Truth asks this same sacrifice of all who seek it: to lose the comfort of falsehood, to give up the warmth of illusion and to stand in the cold air of clarity.
It is also to speak as the völva spoke - without flattery, without bending the message to please those who listen. The old seeresses told kings their ruin as calmly as they spoke of spring. Their power came from their alignment with what was real. To twist the truth is to break that alignment, to turn the staff against yourself.
Respect gives you allies. Patience gives you depth. Boundaries give you safety. But truth gives you clarity and clarity gives you direction. Without it, every gift curdles, every act loses shape. With it, the craft flows cleanly through you and your words become strong enough to bear the weight of the unseen. Truth makes the seer a vessel (not a perfect one, but a faithful one) able to carry what is given across the veil without distortion.
The road of Seiðr is long, and each law builds upon the last. Now that you have learned the power of truth, the next step awaits. The next lesson is Ábyrgð - Responsibility, the understanding that every word spoken, every vision shared, every act of magic carries consequence. For what you weave does not end with you; it ripples through wyrd itself.
When you have learned to see clearly, you must next learn to act with care.