Aikaintaite

Where raised and carved are these mountains lying prostrate beneath beneath the vast sky? What intention has fixed that unattainable sky and the figures that drift through it? From whence came the brothers and sisters who walk upon four legs beneath the canopy of the woods, fly upon the star-pierced veil of firmament, swim below the fathoms of the waters? Into presence they surface and recede; leaving some trace of their substance: a track half filled with rainfall and cedar fronds tinged brown, scarred bark in the shape of jagged claws, some fragment of bone, moss-covered and worn beyond recognition by the incisors of small things. These traces are too destined to slip into void.

 In their passing they suggest of paths untrod by wandering feet and unseen by seeking eyes. We hear of these passages in furtive whispers at the edge of the woods at dusk or in the ecstatic mystery songs of coyotes under the horned moon. Glimpses of it sometimes present themselves to us when we stand at the edge of an abyss or sense our hearts contract within a deep, dark and old place of the earth. The aurora of an autumn sky guides our thoughts to it when those green veils seem to have faded into the night sky, but in truth still remain; a soft and subtle dance at the edge of perception.

 The shaman knows these gates beyond senses. He journeys to inner spaces where holes within the surface of the land descend to subterranean realms unfathomed, sinks within boundless spaces outside of time, hears those coyote hymns and nighthawk secrets from the other side of the earth inverted into clarity. The shaman carries away the malevolent beings from our hearth, and she returns with healing presences from the nightside realm. She weaves the stories that bind the spirit and the body into wholeness.

One such myth to yolk the outer world with that of the inner is brought to us by a dyad under the sign of Syven; meaning "depth". This particular expression of mystery was entitled Aikaintaite, and it is a tale of stark and engrossing descent into elemental sources, of the cold eyes of the snowy owl, of spirit drifting over brooding spruce forests of inscrutable silence and into abyssal caverns never illuminated by sun or moon.

Lappland drums echo deep within deep within caves where spruce pitch torches dimly illuminate the myth forms of animal and ancestor alike upon the slick and cold walls. They cast the spell that welcomes the trance state necessary to receive the visions. Deeper and subtler tones of uncertain origin lurk in the air and the voice of the shaman, low and resonant, carries a drone like wind caressing the fog enshrouded taiga. He commences the story; told in rhythm as much as in words. The shaman entwines the stoic and harsh voices of men, the sharp and antagonistic growls of werebeasts, and the whispered murmurs of hidden knowledge onto the birch bark and elk hide canvases of the soundscapes to create the dream world of receding glaciers, brooding megafauna and the wild hunt, and ancient circumpolar trees in monumental silence.

These timeless worlds are then gathered into color and life by the kanteles. Furtive and magical melodies wander up ravines to hidden springs icy cold, while shimmering resonances bring down cool mists to wet a weary traveler's face with their cool balm. True to the earth and sky's own ways, they can often be as harsh and violent as they are boon giving. The melodies become distorted and rugged, and now thunder shakes the earth and lightning blasts scars into even the faces of the mountains. Fires rage with voracious hunger throughout the forests, wolves feast upon still living prey, and all is witnessed by the untroubled eyes of the gods.

Always the forms change and the wheel revolves. The journey of Aikaintaite passes through many such cycles. To describe the entire journey, each moment of clarity and harmony, every instant of discord, all the comings and goings, every beginning and end, would be impossible, as the song of these storytellers will bring us all to different realms of our own inner life. What I can say with certainty about this experience is that, like all worthy ones, it is one of understanding and healing; of relation to the worlds of life and death, and the unknowable sphere between them.