In Scandinavia,
The winters can be cold and very dark.
When I was a child and I went to school in the morning,
It was dark.
When I came back from school,
It was dark.
In December,
You get maybe between four to five hours of daylight.
In the summer,
It is the opposite.
We don't get anything else but daylight.
In the past,
Before there were electric lights,
Winter must have been even more difficult to cope with because of the darkness.
For example,
In Finland,
Norway and Sweden,
People worked in the fields from spring to autumn.
But when winter came,
People did not spend that much time outside.
Snow covered the land.
Everything was quiet and the earth was sleeping.
Lovjeta represents this time of comfort,
Feeling happy in our own skin,
In this environment that we live in.
Can you make your home your sanctuary?
A sacred place where you enjoy spending time during the winter months.
Little domestic tasks don't always get the respect they deserve.
Our culture tends to value big dramatic things more than the little everyday things.
What did the Finns,
Swedes and Norwegians do in the wintertime,
In the cold evenings when it was too dark to be outside?
They made candles.
They made yarn with spinning wheels.
Little things that were also necessary.
Give value to those little things that you enjoy doing.
Don't belittle yourself.
Everything that you do has a purpose.
The first goddess is the goddess of intuition.
She comes from my country,
Finland,
And her name is Lovjetar.
This goddess is ancient.
I believe her worship goes back to thousands of years by the very first Finno-Ugric tribes who practiced shamanism.
The name Lovjetar is very mysterious.
In Finnish,
Ovi means the door,
And lovi means a crack or an entry,
A gateway.
There is a Finnish expression,
Lange ta loven,
And this means to fall into trance.
So when a shaman was falling into a trance,
They fell into lovi.
When the shaman entered into a trance state,
They went through a door,
A gateway,
To the underworld,
Often in the shape of an animal,
Usually a bird,
To seek information from the passed away people.
If a person was sick and a shaman was trying to help them,
The shaman went on a spiritual journey.
They fell into lovi and travelled into the river of death to look for the soul of the sick person,
And if successful,
Brought the soul back with them to the land of the living.
Lovjetar was the one who supported this journey.
As the goddess of witchcraft,
She was the goddess of medicines and healing,
Goddess of wisdom,
Questions and answers.
The sacred animal of Lovjetar is the wolf.
Her symbols are the moon,
The stars and snowflakes,
And she is connected to the colours of white,
Silver,
Blue and grey.
In Finnish folklore,
People believed that the world had three layers.
The upper layer was called Ulinen.
That was the home of the highest spirits.
Then there was Keskinen,
The middle world,
The world of humans and nature spirits.
The last of these worlds was Alinen,
The underworld,
World of the dead.
I believe these were not physical places.
Keskinen is the world where we are living.
It is our daily consciousness.
Alinen is night time,
The world of dreams,
The subconscious state.
Ulinen is the ether.
It is the source of everything,
Life and energy.
According to folklore,
Lovjetar was the ruler of the underworld.
This goes along with the idea that she is the goddess of witchcraft and shamanism,
Because in the belief system,
People believed that the spirits of their ancestors were protecting them,
And the shaman had a connection to the spirit world.
Like the wolf,
Lovjetar runs free underneath the moonlight.
Wolves are not solitary creatures.
There is the expression of the lone wolf,
But in the animal kingdom,
Lone wolves are quite exceptional.
The wolf is a pack animal.
Lovjetar is not necessary solitary goddess,
But she is the goddess of healthy boundaries.
Wolf has great instincts,
A sense of direction,
A sense of smell,
Eyesight,
Speed and strength.
Lovjetar gently places the shaman drum next to you.
There are patterns in the drum.
You can see a reindeer and other animals.
You can see the sun painted in the middle of the drum.
There are three goddesses painted on the bottom of the drum.
Lovjetar tells us that there are three sister goddesses in Lapland.
Their names are Juksakka,
Uksakka and Sarakka.
Juksakka has a bow and an arrow in her hands.
She is the goddess of action,
Goddess of hunt.
Is there a goal in your mind that you wish to manifest?
A big event coming up that you are mentally preparing yourself for?
Juksakka can take your hand and lead you away towards your goal.
Uksakka,
The second sister,
Is another gatekeeper.
She is also the goddess of doors and entries.
She also protects the entries of the animal world.
She protects the entries of the beehives,
The holes where the birds enter their nests,
And the caves where the bear sleeps its winter sleep.
She represents protection.
Are there things in your life that you wish to protect?
Maybe it is a person,
Maybe it is yourself.
Are there thoughts and beliefs that you wish to guard?
Just like Uksakka and Lovjetar,
Guard the different doors and entries.
You are the guardian of your own thoughts.
You can control what comes in and what goes out.
This is a great responsibility.
Not something that we humans think about very often,
But the person who we are responsible for the most is ourselves.
Sarakka,
The last goddess,
Is the protector of women.
Sarakka was the goddess of midwives and giving birth.
When we think about femininity,
There are multiple aspects that we can find and multiple roles that we can take.
Daughter,
Sister,
Wife,
Girlfriend,
Mother,
Grandmother.
Most of us fit into one or more of these labels.
Feminine energy is gentle and loving.
Sarakka symbolizes this energy.
In a way,
Lovjetar is a combination of all of these three goddesses.
These three goddesses are the daughters of Matterakka,
The goddess of life.
But she is not painted into the shaman drum,
Because she is all around us.
In the mythology of the Sami,
The native people of Lapland,
Matterakka received the soul of a child from Radien,
The god of community.
Radien was sometimes pictured having reindeer antlers growing from his head.
Inside stars and the northern lights,
Matterakka shaped the body of the child from clay and attached the body to the soul of the child and gave the child the bread of life.
If we think about this metaphor,
According to this story,
We are all born from stardust and we were given life by the earth goddess and brought to the earth by the reindeer god.
Lovjetar gives you three little sticks and asks you to throw the sticks to the shaman drum.
Where these sticks land,
That is up to you.
Perhaps they touch one of the goddesses,
Perhaps the sun in the middle,
Or some of the animals.
Whatever it is,
There is a message for you.
Wherever the sticks land,
Those are the things to follow and to concentrate on.
Day Consciousness Then it is slowly time to return to the day consciousness.
Take a deep breath in and breathe out.
You can move your hands and move your feet.
You can tap yourself a little bit to wake your body.
Thank you for joining me on this meditation.
Blessed be!
