The Fylgja or Shadow Fetch

Countless Germanic Sagas mention the Fylgja, Forynja, Fyreferd, Hamingja; vividly describing the various ways the human soul spirit can manifest itself. Fylgja means "follower"; namely a shadow fetch that accompanies each of us through life. The Fylgja may appear to the owner and others around them, as an omen of death or grave misfortune. It may appear in the full human gestalt of its owner as a "Doppelgänger" (such as the famous case of Emilie Sagee), a "second face" or even shape-shifting animal gestalts, such as the Berserkers (Ulfhednar) were famous for. In the Wieland Saga, Wieland's knee ligaments were cut to prevent his escape from King Nidung in the form of a bird. Swans were also thought to be the fylgja of the Valkiris.

The Fylgja more commonly likes to reveal itself in one's dreams whereas it's more ghostly apparitions tend to prefer the waking hours. While the Fylgja may, in one way, be understood as the "Hugir" (soul), it can also describe a Fylgjukona or even a Dis, namely; guardian spirits of the female variety; that may defend their own gender, watch over an individual, or a whole kindred.

Sometimes several Fylgjur may be bound to a person to insure their safe journey in life as well as death, often in the form of the three Norns (the weavers of fate). Thus some people may have stronger Fylgjur, in essence; more fortune or "Hamingja" than others. While a Fylgjur may also embody the collective spirit of one's ancestors, it is still to be understood as its own individual entity. All in all these manifestations were generally described as dark forms until the time of Snorri Sturlsson. In his account of the Olaf Saga (Heimskringla), he presents 9 women in light robes from the south as opposed to the nine black robed Fylgjur of Norse tradition, in a cryptic attempt to illustrate some epic struggle of good and evil over the soul of the unfortunate Thidrandi.

Speaking from my own personal experience, we seem a dynamic union of matter (dark) and energy (light) in a convectional node of the local spacetime continuum. Remove the energy and you have gravity. Gravity is what defines substance, whereas energy is what breathes life (spirit) into it, makes it dynamic. The fylgia has always felt to me like that gravitational vessel that holds the soul spirit. Take away that spirit and it feels like a gravitational vortice. This defines the death fylgja. This is what I experienced from countless people who left this world. The death fylgja collects their residual energies until that channel can finally close. Yes, in a way you could say it gathers up the pieces. Take that conversely, and by the same principle you can manifest an alterego. In other words shape-shifting.

I've often heard people coin the term "soul retrieval" and "soul fragments" in neo-shamanism. However, I find that it does little to understand what is really happening on the para-physical level with death. My father had a severe stroke that destroyed much his left cranial hemisphere. He was a man raised on that stubborn old Briton stiff upper lip code of silence, so full of duplicity and the most ironic self contradictions. Living with the man was like a modern version of Shakespeare's King Lear. Just before he left for Holland that fateful week, the signs couldn't have been more evident, but he would not listen to reason. His last words were, "If you think I'm going to come back some kind bed ridden mental cripple you'll have to spoon feed, you're wrong. That's just not going to happen". Well it did...and in the weeks that he laid there apathetically, in the neurological clinic; all the jealously guarded mistakes, he kept hidden all these years, came down on me in one crash. The last thing I needed was his fylgja appearing in my dreams to tell me not to worry, that he'd be still around until I sorted the whole mess out. Four years I nursed his steadily failing body, that will tenaciously hanging on until there was nothing left. It practically drained the life out of me too. Three days before he finally died, his fylgja came again, only this time it was an empty vessel, a channel sequesting any empathic links to feed on them. It chilled me to the bone so I let go of them and resisted any further probing. When he passed I felt nothing, just a sense of presence when his fylgja began poltering around the house for weeks afterward. A few times it tried to draw from me again to no avail. About 6 months later, much to my relief, it finally moved on and that portal closed.

As you can see from my little anecdote of life experience, there are a number of things to be wary of in dealing with such quasi-temporal manifestations. A fylgja without a mortal vessel is the stuff of ghosts and unresolved souls. Not all of them are to be empathically reckoned with.