MEGIN - Life Power and Spring Energy

SPRING 2021 - by ANNETTE HØST

Every naked spring, on the very day when the Sun for the first time has Power to really warm me through and make my cheeks glow, the old Nordic word MEGIN springs up in my consciousness, because it so precisely expresses the energy that bursts forward. In the Sun, the Earth, the Light, the Tree - in Everything.

The concept of megin has inspired me since I first came across it in Folke Ström's old "Nordic Paganism - Faith and Customs in Pre-Christian Times"(Nordisk Hedendom- Tro och Sed I Förkristen Tid). He presents megin as the immanent power that gives every being - from the greatest cosmic forces to you and me - their specific potency and enables them to realize their purpose, within the Whole. “The sun exerts its life-giving solarmegin on the Earth, who itself has its own jarðarmegin. Winter has its vetrarmegin, the wind its veðrmegin, the sea its hafsmegin.”

This is also the spiritual power we invite and invoke in our shamanic work. And the old Swedish word dagsmeja (day’s megin) expresses what makes us euphoric in the Spring: The Power of the Increasing Day.

That’s how it is for me in the springtime, - I am happy and get strengthened by just being with the raw sensations of the day’s life energy. Right from the woodpecker drumming in the morning. I get high from carrying trunks of fresh elm and dry hawthorn home, simply sensing the difference in their weight, the way they each meet the saw blade and the ax, the smell of the wood, indeed the whole personality and megin of the tree. And my own megin, as my breath streams out in clouds and my legs tremble under the weight of the elm trunk. There is no room for reservations or explanations, just for being and life energy.

Megin seems to me to be an inspiration for both our daily lives and our shamanic practice. We can gather so much energy by simply connecting with the foundation, in the immediate being-together with the megin of all beings. As simple as the Sun’s glow in your cheeks. As simple as the rhythm of your breathing as you walk on the Earth, alive and alert!