I wrote this about 10 years ago and I still find that its content is relevant, now and then I’ve added a little to it and reformulated other things as the sense of its inner totality has changed in me over the years, and it’s still changing. It is above all Louhi who makes it so complicated. She is changing all the time. But on the other hand, is it not that which makes us seek our inner source, and to find that space between all there is that unites all opposites. Since it’s Christmas and all, I am doing it again. Thinking about both my own, and her relation to its time.
In contradiction to what christianity had led us to believe, and later our materialism and shopping addiction, I suggest that Santa Claus origin is rather to be found in the northern folklore figure of Väinämöinen, the hero creator of our world anew. And in the stories about him where he is viewed as the bringer of conciousness. A seer and creator. A bard, and the spirit of chants, songs and poetry. When I say materialism, I mean it in the absence of an active individual self-observation and psychic reflection in a cultural sense.
Väinämöinen is thus very far from the figure we invigorate our children with today. And he has nothing to do with our present day view of Santa Claus or its Christian substitution Saint Nicholas. But still, I think the exaggerated search for, and the original purpose of Christmas gifts can become understood in a new way again through old northern beliefs, because it reveals another meaning to the procuring and giving of gifts. Since this old view got distorted and lost, the original intention of acquiring them was turned into our present materialism. However, no wish list can ever replace the connection that has been lost to our original sense of a wholeness.
Väinämöinen is connected to the foundation of the world pillar, also thought of as the “world tree” that in turn was thought to rest on the Pohjantähti or the North Star holding up the world. This is the very star that we put at the top of the christmas tree. It can also be seen as a vertical passage between our world and the source of its objective center present to us everywhere at the same time.
The north star and its position in the sky is also what guides the tietäjä’s, and noadi heroes to seek marriage with the daughters of Pohjola. Here in Pohjola, or the underworld, the female Louhi is the powerful and evil witch Queen ruling over this northern realm with her ability to change shape and weave mighty enchantments. She appears as raw Nature, as the intoxicating opposite of consciousness. A Queen of great powers, and she request a payment for the hands of her daughters in marriage. She seduces us into pretending her to be her daughters. But it’s her way of being enchanting, hiding who she really is. It is deception through imagination, by magic. Being aware of this is the entrance to pass beyond our psychic intoxication. Without payment she will not reveal who she really is. We have to give something up for her to change, to show herself. Louhi also sets difficult to impossible tasks to perform in order for the seekers to get hold of the objective psychic content they so intensely desire, which leads to the forging of the Sampo.
The sampo is one such payment, a magic mill of plenty which churns out abundance. And abundance is what we feel when we are connected to this axis or tree holding up the sky. Separating out a worldly conscious space between her realm and our instincts. Its churning lid have also been interpreted as a symbol of the celestial vault of the heavens, embedded with stars, revolving around a central axis. It can also be seen as the eternal sum of all time and our experience of being in its constant course, the relentless circling around its axis and the churning of our inner work, observing the timeless forms revealed to us in the ordeals we have to go through to enter her world in between. Her name Louhi also refers to this space as it is connected to the modern word “lovi” which in Finnish means cleft or crevice, or the gap between the different layers of the world. By giving her gifts, like the sampo, can be seen as an act of being attentive in our personal work, of sacrificing ourselves and subjecting ourselves to the experience of her in that space where we will get to know her true character. We have to earn her acceptance before she gets visible to us and show us some of her benevolent, transformative and helpful aspects. The hero or Tietäjä has to give something up to gain entrance into Pohjola. To be able get himself this kind of a wife. Which is done with chants, songs and poetry. By developing his psychological reflection, his creative and imaginative skills. Otherwise her magic influence will seduce him by using his own imagination against him. Which is what true magic is all about in our everyday life. But if he can cope with this, she might come to his support, and give up some of those magical abilities in return for the efforts as he get access to the celestial world of the heavens through her. But first the noadi must help to keep the world up on its pillar by some sacrifice. Because if there is no pillar, there is no wife. And there certaintly is no world.
There is also a good reason for doing all this at the time of “Christmas”. Christmas is celebrated on the winter solstice when the pillar seems to be at its weakest, and almost broken on the longest night of the year. Christmas was originally a ceremony linked to the winter solstice. It is a recognition of rebirth, of creating and balancing up the world again with the help of the spirit of Väinämöinen. We are trying to assemble back the lost gift. The Sampo that has been lost when stolen by Louhi, and broken into pieces. Which we can seen as the fragmentation of our senses. Our psychic consciousness that has been lost by her magical ability in her use of our imagination. On the winter solstice we want to show that we have submitted ourselves to the search by bringing back the pieces of the sampo in our giving of Christmas gifts, to help the spirit of the noadi-tietäjä-hero to enter into this purely abstract place, a foreboding forever cold land far in the north. And to meet with Louhi. To get our souls back, and then find our way back to the world of consciousness.
By celebrating Christmas, we are actually trying to bring her and her magic back with us, with the abundance of her interpersonal space, and to access what is inside it by putting the lost and broken pieces of our psychic reflection back together again, and go through the trials required in trying to interact with Louhi in a ceremonial way. We do not celebrate “christ-mass”, we pay tribute to the sun, to the creation of the world between worlds, and celebrate the winter solstice. We are asking the spirit of Väinämöinen to help us find our way back to nature, to our within in the without.