Kari Tauring is a Völva, sharing her ethnic heritage through performances and workshops. Völva stav
Völva is a reclaimed word from Old Norse which means staff
carrier. The women and men who were Völvas and Viktis carried their
healing, far-seeing, ceremonial, and magical practice throughout
Scandinavia and the Baltic.
In this booklist,
Kari shares some resources which balance the Northern European traditions with broader metaphysical teachings which support her work. You will find a delightful mix of serious academic works and more popular books. As expected, many of these titles delve into Nordic Myth and wisdom traditions, but you will also find books about mind, archetypes, working with the energy body, aligning with nature, and more.
Kari provides commentary for each of the titles to explain how they fit into Völva Stav, Kari's system for teaching and practicing the staff
carrying tradition. It's essential goal is to create alignment
with the world tree, perceive and heal the oorlog. Healing patterns of
Inherited Cultural Grief inherent in all cultures severed from their
deep root traditions, is essential for creating a healed future for our
children.
These books bring background to her teachings, as well as providing great source material to anyone following an ancestral or earth-wisdom path. We start out with Norse Study works, and then step into more comparitive works, and working with energy and mind. A few of these are available as eBooks, as well.
Book List
$17.95
ISBN-13: 9780394748467
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Published: Pantheon, 7/1981
Easy to read re-tellings of the myths in modern-day English, based on the compilation of lore about that story. It has very good footnotes and references so you can find where the myths actually appear in the Eddas and Sagas
$22.95
ISBN-13: 9780292764996
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Published: University of Texas Press, 1/1986
The most generally accepted translation of the Poetic Edda. Again, a good place to start. But it doesn't include the Old Norse Side by Side. I recommend checking out GermanicMythology.com for a side-by-side translations, and then review with the book so you can take notes.
$44.75
ISBN-13: 9781113452931
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Published: BiblioLife, 8/2009
I suggest multiple interpretations of the Poetic Edda. After a few years of side by side translations, you will begin to interpret it for yourself. I suppose it’s my Lutheran upbringing. We always had several versions of the Bible, concordances, and translations from Greek and Hebrew in order to form our own personal relationship with the material and the deities the stories represent.
$26.75
ISBN-13: 9780559130991
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Published: BiblioLife, 4/2009
This is a primer for Nordic Skalds so they would understand the stories and the Kennings and the poetic conventions of traditional Norse verse. Unlike the Poetic Eddas which were written anonymously based on oral tradition, this is a known author writing for a particular audience in Medieval Iceland.
$29.95
ISBN-13: 9780299038748
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Published: University of Wisconsin Press, 12/1974
This has footnotes for multiple dialects. Good for researching the folk stories and songs from different regions.
$6.99
ISBN-13: 9780875425931
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Published: Llewellyn Publications, 1/1989
This little volume is really all that you need to start working with the energy of the runes, an excellent starting point.
$29.95
ISBN-13: 9780873515764
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Published: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 3/2007
Written by a professor at Luther College. Her research is impeccable. This book reveals the lineage of women's healing traditions in Norway in particular, and in the rest of Scandinavia. You can see the tension between the new western medical model and the traditional folk medicine practiced largely by women. This doesn't go back as far as the Volvas, but you can see where it would eventually lead back to them.
$44.95
ISBN-13: 9780415256513
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Published: Routledge, 12/2001
This book researches one type of Seid practice as developed by the Hrafner group on the West Coast, America. One would wish that the author would have researched more seid workers throughout the United States. Still, it gives the reader a good grasp of that type of Heathen working and compiles the mentions of seid and volva work from the lore into one tidy spot.
$18.95
ISBN-13: 9780393313482
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Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 9/1995
A layman's version of Wayland Barber's giant thesis (Prehistoric Textiles) that tells the store of the migrations of humanity through found textiles and how it connects to women's sacred work.
$60.00
ISBN-13: 9780691002248
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Published: Princeton University Press, 12/1992
This is fairly academic, and goes much more in depth about the cultures than "Women's Work." This archeological work is culturally reconstructive, so it helps us get into mindset of our foremothers.
$24.95
ISBN-13: 9780715630365
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Published: Bristol Classical Press, 2/2010
This book was a real game-changer in my quest for authentic self identity as a Northern European. Our indigenous ancestors never called themselves Germans or Celts anymore than the Lakota called themselves Indians. This book reveals the process a pre-literate culture goes through with self identity and the power of using outsider definitions.
$17.00
ISBN-13: 9780062516329
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Published: HarperOne, 10/1999
This is a great primer for women and men to get a historical and practical immersion in the feminine divine. I read it in High School and it changed my whole world view. I began working with my menses and living on a moon cycle. This created a shift in consciousness and identity that made it hard for me to live in the world of the “box-set Roman calendar” and linear thinking.
$19.90
ISBN-13: 9781566634557
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Published: Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 8/2002
Winn-Carlson has hit on one of the most important aspects of Northern European tradition from the Paleolithic to today. Our relationship to the cow has informed our cultural mindset for a millennia. This book is outstanding. One of the best reads I have ever had.
$32.95
ISBN-13: 9780691018331
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Published: Princeton University Press, 8/1981
Jung provides excellent primer when plunging into Norse myths. As you read the stories of the Poetic and Prose Eddas and the Sagas, knowing how these cultural mythos work in your own microcosm of complex human psyche will give you clues as to what lessons these stories held on the macrocosm of the culture.
$31.58
ISBN-13: 9780520229150
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Published: University of California Press, 1/2001
A global study of Goddesses and Goddess traditions is important as we re-ignite the relationships to our Norse Goddesses. Very little information was written about the feminine divine in Norse Tradition, due to the patriarchal influx. This and other volumes like it help re-establish the concept of female deity and give platforms for the learning we will do through ritual contact with our own Norse Goddesses.
$21.95
ISBN-13: 9781577315933
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Published: New World Library, 7/2008
Joseph Campbell paved the way for the comparison of cultural mythologies around the globe. It gives the reader a good model of potential ways to approach Norse myths.
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9780385418867
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Published: Anchor, 6/1991
Again, Campbell’s work is wise and interesting. It is scholastic research written with an entertaining “layman’s” understanding.
$17.95
ISBN-13: 9781590308356
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Published: Shambhala, 9/2010
Anyone who would presume to journey inter-dimensionally should have a firm understanding of the science and philosophy of quantum physics. Everything from “observer affected reality” to the power of the spoken word must be understood and then trained to discipline. This book is at once scholarly and readable.
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780395585726
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Published: Mariner Books, 7/1991
In Volva Stav we align with the world tree on many inter-dimensional levels. Understanding how the nine worlds is modeled in the development of the brain is a key to high functioning as a staff carrier. This book is a fun read with awesome drawings!
$16.95
ISBN-13: 9781569753675
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Published: Ulysses Press, 12/2003
This or other such books that explain the chakra systems will give words and understanding to the Old Norse equivalents. As Norse tradition is Indo-European, a study of all the Hindu teachings is extremely beneficial.
$17.99
ISBN-13: 9781587611421
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Published: Celestial Arts, 3/2003
This book describes humans scientifically, as a battery of energy with negative and positive charges and a fluctuating ebb and flow based on seasonal/environmental conditions. It gives charts and graphs developed through Chinese medicine. Norse medicine has many of the same concepts of living in balance with nature, energy channels and herbalism, but delivered through oral tradition and without the continuous and unbroken traditions of Chinese medicine. This book and these concepts are tools in the re-construction of Norse medicine.
$5.18
Model: 0j75JHTw1pIC
Published: Council Oaks Distribution
(NOTE: This book is available as an eBook only. It is out of print) A mind-blower of a book. Rael shares his Hopi story of creation from sound and our relationship to manifestation through aligning with the vibration of what we perceive as reality. This is an essential part of seidr work. Aligning with Ymir – the primal shriek, and the variant vibrations nurtured through the cow-principal, Audumla. Again, the Hopi traditional stories were not cut off from the people 1500 years ago, but rather just a few hundred years. There is much we can learn about the process of sound, being, and manifestation process from the Hopi tradition as we re-construct our own traditional ways through the runes and runos of our wyrd web.
$12.95
ISBN-13: 9780927978248
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Perelandra, Limited, 7/1998
This is, to me, the best book ever written about living within the vibration of creation. It starts as autobiography both humorous and shocking. It graduates to a practical guide for working with nature’s divas and elementals. Both aspects, making sense of the oorlag (from family of origin issues) to living in the divinity of nature are essential for a volva.
$16.95
ISBN-13: 9780743289801
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Published: Atria Books, 9/2005
This book shows the power of words, sounds, and vibrations in creating and affecting reality on the microcosm. If one presumes to work with the Web of Wyrd, this book will surely illuminate the seriousness of the demand for impeccability of word, thought and Ansuz – that which issues from the mouth.
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780892818679
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Published: Destiny Books, 4/2001
This book is great in terms of seeing how spiritual traditions based on seasonal changes are celebrated as holy days around the world. Heathen days are included but the most important lesson in this little book is in seeing the clumps of holy days around Solstices and Equinoxes and on the moon tides.
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781569243602
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Published: Da Capo Press, 10/2005
$14.99
ISBN-13: 9780671764203
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Published: Touchstone, 4/1980
The indigenous American pre-literate culture was disrupted so recently that there is so much we, as indigenous Europeans can learn about the process of oppression and change as regards spiritual practice. Our circular, 13 moon calendars were in use from the Paleolithic to the “Romanization” period. How we worshipped in alignment with the Nature spiritual was hidden so deeply. Reading about the way other cultures practice and talk about this practice in the modern context can really help unlock these memories in our own tradition and helps give us a vocabulary to begin re-constructing our practices.
$14.99
ISBN-13: 9780062515148
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Published: HarperOne, 6/1999
I like all of Jamie Sams writing. It’s good re-constructive traditional material for modern consumption. These paths of human transformation are global as they relate to humanity as a whole. In Volva Stav we are working towards living simultaneously on all nine worlds through core alignment. This book is full of familiar stories of how that can be awkward in the modern world (like when your new level of vibration messes up your computer or you loose your car keys in a vortex on another world, uff da!).
$29.95
ISBN-13: 9780312204914
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: St. Martin's Press, 7/1999
As we work with our fyglia and other animal spirit guides, and as we get used to the animals communicating with us on the physical plane, books like this one are very useful in interpreting and “normalizing” the experience.
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