Welcome to The Foundations of Psychopomp Guest Lecture Series
This month we honored to welcome Imelda Almqvist
Imelda’s approach to psychopomp work considers the cosmology of the person/soul they are working with. Beliefs vary greatly, as do conceptualizations of the journey a soul makes after death.
In this presentation Imelda will take participants through the Old Norse view on the continuation of consciousness after death. She will introduce the road to the Land of the Dead (the Milky Way) and the key psychopomps in her home tradition (such as Odin, Freyja and others). She will also give a brief introduction to the main realms where souls go after death (which is not one unified place, there are several possibilities). She will also explain the Old Norse phenomenon called The Wild Hunt and how it is connected to Autumn storms and Winter; meaning that psychopomp work has a strong connection to the seasons, the time of year and cosmic cycles of creation and destruction. There is also a mysterious Hag who undoes and re-ties a cosmic knot in the Weave of the Universe.
January 24, 2025
3pm-5pm EST
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About The Facilitator
Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination – Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) was published in June 2022.
The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.
Imelda has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.
Imelda is currently working on a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) and on more books in the Green Bear Series. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings, which can be watched any time.