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Chapter 48 - Viking Spirits Too

The inspiration came when she was working in Emma’s APL lab the following day. She had a vision of how her calculations might fit the physical reality that the magnetic force experiments revealed. She began sketching her idea in her lab notebook, working on it for most of the morning. Being the winter break, many of the engineers and techs were off. But Marty Fox, the engineer who she had worked with on the magnetic coil scale-up attempt, came into the lab during the afternoon and she told him what she had come up with.

“Well, that’s an unusual concept,” he told her. “Reminds me of the radial engines used in some prop aircraft. The cylinders are in a circle instead of a linear geometry. You said you did some calcs?”

Tamara showed him the computer’s output from the simulation that she had calculated based on the scaled-up coils without the superconducting effects.

“Okay, that looks good. Only thing, those 2-centimeter coils produced a field of about a thousand-fold greater than those calcs show.”

“Right, so I used that data and plugged it into my model for this new geometry, taking into account the superconducting elements and ran the simulation again this morning,” she told him. “See the results? The three orders of magnitude difference you saw gets corrected. So it seems the math theory is valid; the difference is because of the superconducting effect, and the modification I made to the Biot-Savart law needs that empirical correction to account for the superconducting circuit behavior. Oh, hi, Emma.”

Emma had come in while Tamara was talking to Fox.

“What’s this about modifying the Biot-Savart law, then?” she asked.

Tamara explained how she had thought of using the coils in a different way. Then she went on.

“I also did some thinking about monopoles. Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation for something is most likely the right one. So the magnetic effect being the result of a fundamental particle is likely the correct one. That means searching for an unknown additional fundamental force would be wasting time. I decided that if monopoles do exist, then the universe’s symmetry would suggest that magnetic monopoles should have an internal structure, just like quarks make up hadrons. When I tried to use math to check the validity of that idea, I came up with some mind-boggling numbers for the monopole’s mass. And that suggests the reason why particle accelerators haven’t detected monopoles—we’re nowhere close in achieving the energy needed.

“Using current theories based on the standard model of particle physics, I tried estimating the possible mass for the magnetic monopole. Even making the most liberal assumptions, it seems that its mass could range from 10¹⁰ to 10¹⁴ TeV/c². That’s huge, the smallest mass I calculated it to be is ten billion TeV/c². The Geneva accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, the LHC, can only get to 13 TeV, and its ring is enormous, it’s 27 kilometers around. So far, the largest particle mass produced in a collider is the top quark, whose mass is approximately 0.17321 TeV/c².”

“Refresh my memory, Tamara,” Fox said. “I’m an electrical engineer, not a physicist. What do those numbers mean in real life?”

Tamara chuckled. “Yeah, engineers prefer to think in SI energy units. Particle physicists are a snooty breed, they prefer electron-volts. That’s a single electron moving through a potential difference of one volt—it’s a very tiny number, but very useful at the atomic scale. You do know that the ‘T’ in TeV is for ‘tera’ and means one trillion. Oh, another thing—you’ll hear particle physicists using electron-volts for mass too, but what they’re really referring to is the mass-equivalent unit eV/c², where the speed of light, c, is understood. For an engineer, in joules, if the LHC can develop 13 TeV... then to joules... let me get a calculator... that’s a 1.6 factor... okay. It’s 2.08×10^–6 joules. To compare to real life, let’s see, gravity force is 9.8 newtons per kilogram, so a mass of 1 kilogram falling a distance of 1 meter gives a force of 9.8 joules. An electron-volt is tiny, as I said. One joule is equivalent to 6.242×10⁶ TeV. So the minimum force needed to produce a monopole, as my calculations showed, would be 1600 joules. Jeez, that much energy at the atomic scale would only have been available just after the Big Bang, I think.”

Emma had been listening with a faint smile.

“I see you’ve taken my advice to heart and you’re using maths for guiding your engineering planning, rather than your gut feeling,” she said, approvingly. “So you still believe that you’ve captured the elusive monopole?”

“If I did, with its apparent mass, that could go a long way to account for the amount of dark matter in the universe. Couldn’t it?” Tamara asked.

“Perhaps, but your idea’s still missing a few technical details,” Emma sniggered, and then broke out laughing.

“This isn’t the place for art appreciation, Emma,” Tamara smirked back, and at Fox’s confused look, told him, “Private joke.”

“Okay. Now then, let’s go over what you’re planning, shall we?” Emma said.

Good, Tamara thought. Maybe she can find something I did wrong.

Tamara pulled her notebook over and handed it to Emma, who began working through Tamara’s calculations. She didn’t find any mathematical errors but she was interested in how Tamara used Dirac’s comment about the quantization of electrical charge as the inspiration for her starting point.

Tamara explained, “So I was thinking of the idea that the quarks and leptons that make up the universe’s visible matter, together with their associated force particles, could have a counterpart involving the magnetic monopole, which would have a similar internal structure. That’s kind of an extension of the supersymmetry idea, in a way. The standard model predicts that antimatter should exist, but only fleeting traces, short-lived, have been detected, so the standard model still has its shortcomings. I wanted to see what kind of mass a theoretical monopole should have, so I began by playing with Maxwell’s equations and extended them to quantum field theory and that’s where my monopole mass calc came from.

“We previously observed that huge repulsive force in my coil, and I had assumed that the only possibility was magnetism. But then I recalled that the dark force itself is repulsive. All forces have a particle counterpart; that’s the duality of matter and energy. What if monopoles make up dark matter and dark energy is carried by a structural particle of monopoles? Or dark energy is anti-gravity, and its mediating particle is an anti-graviton?

“One result from my calcs made no sense; in the real-world magnetic dipole, the lines of force connect the poles. Cut a dipole in half, separating its poles, and you get two dipoles. My field calcs for the monopole show that the field extends out radially from the source but the field strength dropoff doesn’t obey the inverse-square law like electric monopoles, which have a spherical symmetry. Magnetic forces have a dipole symmetry and field decay follows an inverse-cube law. But even though this possible magnetic monopole appears to exhibit a spherical symmetry, it appears to follow the same field characteristic that the dipole does. So that implies that the magnetic lines of force connect to something, somewhere.

“We need to build an apparatus with the coil assembly to test the field shape because much of the math results imply strange behavior. In fact, I got so bogged down in the math that the only reasonable numbers I could come up with was for the potential field strength of the 2-centimeter coils that we built; the calcs for the super-coils make no sense. And even those calcs need an empirical adjustment to compensate for the superconductivity of the components.”

“So I’m looking at your numbers but nothing I see looks like a glaring error,” Emma said thoughtfully. “Why don’t you and Marty assemble one or two of your... erm... super-coils? Interesting name choice, innit. Oh, another thing. I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’ve thought about my suggestion that you hire an engineer and tech of your own—not that I mind having Marty and my group work with you. Having your own people will keep development issues properly separate in both of our work.”

“Yeah, I did discuss that with the lawyer who handles the trust I had set up to manage the royalties and licensing income I’m getting,” Tamara said. “He told me that I could go ahead and have him do that and there would be some tax advantages, especially if he set it up as a grant to Hopkins for use at the APL for technical support of a research program. I told him what I needed and he’s worked out the grant amount.”

“That’s ace. And running it through the APL, the way I’ve done with my own people, means that they’ll be vetted for a security clearance. You should go to Admin and talk to the HR—the human relations—blokes there and they can do the recruiting. If you want, I can help interviewing candidates.”

~~~~

During the next few days, that was how Tamara occupied her time. She got a recruiting process underway and also worked with Fox and by week’s end, two coil arrays were finished. She had taken care that the sub-coil orientation was arranged to avoid the mutual repulsion that she had seen when she had tested the original 4-millimeter coil assembly chip. In their testing of the 2-centimeter coils, the engineers had observed that the field the coils produced repelled ferro-magnetic materials, such as iron and nickel, but had no effect on nonmagnetic materials. Interestingly, though, the field weakly attracted diamagnetic materials but the effect was small.

Emma came to the lab to see the resulting apparatus when it was ready to test. Tamara fed the assembly with a tiny amount of current and slowly began to increase it, while they watched a two-gram iron pellet suspended by a nylon monofilament string in the center of the super-coil. There was no effect for a trickle of current, but when she advanced the rheostat a slight amount more, the pellet suddenly shot straight out, away from the coil assembly; its string stretched and snapped, and the pellet flew a foot or two more, falling to the floor.

The group watched in awe.

“We need to calculate the force exerted on that pellet,” Emma ordered. “Let’s get the tensile strength of the string. We can calculate the length of time the force was applied from the high-speed video recording, so Marty, please get that from the camera. We know the current delivered to the system and can get the power to the system from that, while the pellet was accelerating. Oh, and check the pellet for remanence—residual magnetism.”

“That was impressive,” Fox commented. “In our tests of the small coil, we noticed a threshold effect where the magnetic field dropped off significantly a few feet away. We did clear this area of any magnetic materials but anyway, I was trying to watch the other metallic items nearby. Nothing appears to be affected. I’ll get the techs to put this coil geometry through the whole set of tests but that won’t be finished until after the holidays.”

“That will be fine,” Emma said. “Tamara needs to get back to the MRI study anyway; she’ll be starting with her subject testing when the spring term begins. Is that correct, Tamara?”

“Yep. All the phantom tests are complete. Davy will be our MRI tech for the study and he’s working on the conversions of the imaging programming for the old coil parameters to the new one.”

“Tamara, I’m going to go over your numbers really carefully,” Emma said. “There’s a whole lot here that I need to understand theoretically. Marty, please get me the timings from the video and the power settings. When you get them, get me the field strengths too. And have the techs run the coils with samples of differing magnetic permeability and some diamagnetic materials as well. We need to fully characterize the physical properties of this phenomenon.”

“Will do, Emma.”

“Blimey, with the holiday starting, nothing more will be happening till after, will it,” Emma sighed. “Now then, the afternoon is almost over, so let’s close up and leave.”

As Tamara walked away with Emma, she asked Emma, “I’m getting all these contacts from a bunch of university physics and engineering departments asking if I could visit to give a talk about my work, Emma. I don’t know how to answer them.”

Emma smiled. “That’s good news, innit. It shows that they’re reading your papers. I’m getting requests too. How do you feel you should reply?”

“Um, I’d rather hold off—I’m way too busy to prepare a presentation and with this spring’s research and class schedule...”

“There’s your answer, then, dear,” Emma told her. “Thank them for their interest in your work but politely decline for those reasons.”

“Sure. Thanks, Emma.”

Late December

During the Christmas and New Year’s holiday break, Tamara finally got to meet the Richardsons, Mason and Angela, Claire’s parents. Tamara was at Peter’s home for their Christmas eve dinner and the Richardsons and the Winsbergs, senior, were there too. Of course Mason and Angela had been looking forward to meeting her and Mason was not shy about grilling her. Peter had told Tamara to expect it.

“I’m delighted to finally get to meet you, Tamara,” Mason told her after Peter introduced her to him and Angela.

Angela smiled and greeted her. “It’s so nice to meet you at last.”

Mason went on, “It’s such a cliché but I’ll use it: Angie and I have heard lots of good things about you, right, Angie?”

“Yes, indeed, what you’ve done for Peter and others in our family.”

“Oh, Peter, could you give us a few minutes with Tamara?” Mason asked.

“Oh, come on, Pops,” Peter complained. “You don’t need to go into your third degree now.”

He chuckled. “No, son, it’s not about her being good for you, it’s more like are we worthy of a woman like her in the family. We just want to talk privately for a few minutes.”

Tamara found out that Mason simply wanted to be certain that she knew about Peter’s problems in high school.

“Claire did tell us that Peter mentioned to her that he told you about that bad time he had,” Mason said after Peter walked away. “But did he tell you any details?”

Tamara nodded. “He was very open about what happened—even told a group of us about it, and then told me lots more in private. Why is this important for us to talk about it privately? Peter’s open about it, really.”

Angela smiled. “That’s wonderful. It’s because he’s had a lot of difficulty talking about it to others, including in the family, and we didn’t want that problem time to become something that came between you two in the future.”

Tamara had been trying to “read” them emotionally, but all he could get from Mason was that he had an intense, direct, and focused personality with a very strong moral sense.

Why is he in politics, then? Tamara wondered. Wouldn’t what he sees greatly trouble him?

Angela, by comparison, had an open and loving personality that was almost totally focused on Mason but her will seemed as strong as iron. Her family was also there, but Mason was the focus.

The thought occurred to Tamara, Behind every strong man stands a strong woman? That so-called proverb is so wrong. These two are a team, really, so it should be ‘Beside every strong man...

Her thoughts drew back because Mason was speaking.

“Yes, I had spoken to Werner about the Winsbergs meeting you and how you had impressed them, especially Greta. They’re here today too, somewhere around. I just wanted to tell you that everyone’s noticed the difference in Peter; he says it’s because of you, so we’re so grateful that he met you.”

He reached for her hand but Tamara drew him into a hug; then she hugged Angela.

“I can’t take all of the credit, obviously,” Tamara told them. “You guys in his family did the best part of helping him. The love I feel from all of his family members tells me a lot about you folks.”

“Yes, my dear,” Angela said. “That’s what Greta said about you—that you were sensitive to how people feel. Peter’s like that too, also Barbara.”

And you really don’t have the full sense of that, Tamara thought.

She was able to tell that they both had a small ability at empathic sensing, slightly greater than average, but nothing even close to Peter’s or Barbara’s ability. But she could tell that Mason was a shrewd observer of body language.

“All right, let’s let this lovely young lady go now so she can go back to her guy,” Mason said, grinning. “It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Tamara.”

“Likewise,” she said and then she went looking for Peter.

Tamara spent the afternoon and evening talking with Peter’s family members and even got to spend some time with Greta. She told Greta that her mom would be coming to Baltimore for a visit starting on Thursday and she’d try to find a way to get them together then.

~~~~

Tamara spent a lot of social time during the day following Christmas, visiting with Peter’s family. Terence had gone back to Austin for the Christmas week, so it was just the three friends. Tamara had mentioned to Emma that her parents would be in town after Christmas, and Emma had invited her and her parents to her home on that Saturday. On Thursday afternoon, Peter and Tamara drove to the airport to pick up her parents. When they met Peter, Nadine had to stifle a gasp.

“Tamara,” she whispered to her as Wilson was talking to Peter, “do you sense anything from Peter?”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“There’s a presence about him, just like your dad has that presence of Ogorin always nearby.”

“I don’t feel that, except when Erzulie went to him with her message. I felt the presence then.”

“This is different, sweetie, it’s a feeling similar to yours. Oh dear. That’s it; he’s probably a focus as well. A pwen, like you, I think. He seems to be a focus of spirituality—and he isn’t from our culture and ancestry. I’ve never heard of something like that before...”

“Manman, there are other cultures and...”

“Oh dear, yes. With my education, I should have realized that,” Nadine said.

“What I was going to say—Peter’s granmanman, Greta, on his father’s side, has spirits the way we do but her ancestors are Danish. Or Norse, actually. Their cultures have lwa too but of course their words for them are different. I felt a presence in her... oh, wait; I suddenly got a memory of Manman Tamara that just appeared. Oh, I see now how you are seeing Peter. I...”

Their whispered discussion was interrupted by Wilson.

“Honey, Peter and I got our bags. The kids are parked in the short-term lot, so we need to get a move on. Let’s get to the hotel and check in.”

They set off for the parking lot and Peter said, “You do remember that my folks are making dinner for all of us. Do you want me to drop you off and pick you up later?”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Tamara said. “I want to talk to my mom for a bit; also fill them in on what we’re doing while they’re here.”

After Tamara and her parents had checked in and were alone, Nadine told her how proud they were about her Draper Prize.

“So you mentioned that it’s held in a D.C. hotel?” Wilson asked.

“Yep; they have it in a hotel conference ballroom and the presentation is during Engineers Week. I sent you the date; it’s the third week in February.”

“We’ll definitely be there,” Nadine said as Wilson nodded.

Then he said to her, “Your guy’s pretty impressive, honey. He’s got a solid, internal strength... the kind of focus and personality that makes for a great Marine too.”

“Ha, coming from you, Dad, that’s great praise. Thanks. That’s what I see in him, too. Not the Marine part, though. But Mom noticed something that I missed, and then her comments to me freed up a bit more of Granmanman’s memories in me. Mom saw a kinda presence in Peter. Something from Manman Tamara’s brief time in my consciousness popped out and I could see what she saw. I see it in you too now—like a shadow. It’s kinda like the memory of a shadow in your emotions and it has the taste of Ogorin for you.”

“Yes, that describes what I sense too,” Nadine said. “I see something like that with Peter, but now, my darling daughter, you seem to be surrounded by presences. More than ever before, too.”

“Wow, and that’s what Greta said about me, too. When she said that to me, I realized that I could sense it in her. She called it or them her ‘guardians.’ She wasn’t sure if it was one or more and I couldn’t tell but I thought I sensed two.”

“So we’ll get to meet her tomorrow?” Nadine asked.

“Yep. The Winsberg clan. The Richardsons too. Both sets of Peter’s grandparents. Greta told me some interesting stuff about their culture’s spirits. They have benevolent and malefic aspects, just as ours do. I have trouble understanding how a good spirit can also be evil, but I saw that happen with Mr Evil. In my time of need, Marinette-Bwa-Chèch, supposedly the most evil of the lwa, responded to me to do something good.”

Nadine nodded and smiled. “Your physics has the answer, my child. Every particle has an antiparticle, as I understand it. Two manifestations of the same thing. And your quantum physics says that you can’t determine something’s state until you look at it. Before you look, it can be in any possible state. Some say perhaps in all possible ones. Is this not true?”

“Mom? You’ve been reading physics stuff?” Tamara asked, astonished.

“Gotta keep up with my genius daughter,” Nadine smirked. “So the lwa can be like that. They are neutral, as far as humans go. They reflect the personalities of their worshipers. If an evil person chooses to ask their advice, what the person gets is a reflection of his internal desires. The lwa simply reinforces the person’s personality and inclinations. Were you to try to do something evil yourself, since it violates your own morals, then the lwa would appear to be rebuking you; your own personality would rebel. Marinette is simply the dual aspect of a violent spirit, dangerous, but one that can act for good as well as for evil. Her influence is said to be able to either free persons from servitude or committing them to it—as you explained to me when you eliminated the threat of Leger. Thinking about that time still makes me shudder, how you looked when you were possessed then.”

“Okay, that makes sense. You make a good analogy by using quantum superposition; things which exist in opposite states at the same time until they are observed. Ha, it’s funny; a Vodou manbo using quantum mechanics to describe what the lwa do.”

They laughed.

“You told us about Peter’s terrible time in high school,” Wilson said. “And how he’s recovered so well from that time. He seems to be a quiet guy, didn’t say much, but I looked into his eyes when we met. That kid is deep. And he’s got a strong will. Is he stubborn? It seems that he could be.”

“Oh, not at all,” Tamara said. “He can be almost deferential at times, but he’s not like a doormat either. But if you want to see a strong will, wait till you meet his sister, Barbara. Now, she’s a willpower champion—but again, she doesn’t push it unless you’re acting stupid with her. And she’s really attuned to Peter; she was his protector in high school and can sense his emotions, while Peter is a sponge for all emotions around him. That’s why he had such a bad time in high school—he picked up all the negative emotions of kids freaking out about the Naked in School Program. He got all kinds of positive support from his family to help him recover and then he really dove into his studies. Obviously did well, ‘cause he won a Clarke scholarship.”

“I need to talk with him some more,” Nadine said. “There’s something really important about him...”

“Oh! Remember when I did my own worship ritual in my apartment?” Tamara asked. “You said you felt the spiritual effects.”

“Yes, I do.”

“So when it was over, I felt Ayizan tell me that Peter had abilities which I could unlock.”

“Mezanmi! I really do need to speak with him. Hmmm. Well then. Changing the subject, though, what else have you arranged for us this week?”

“I know that Dad’s arranged for you guys to see some people in the State Department and in the Pentagon next week, so there’s just this weekend. Tomorrow, Friday, Claire—Peter’s mom—has a bunch of the family coming. Saturday, we’re going to Emma’s. Her father-in-law Stuart will be there; he’s the Royal Marine guy, Dad.”

“Oh, good,” Wilson said. “We can exchange stories about Uncle Dan and who we might know in common.”

Wilson and Nadine went on to tell Tamara about the things that were going on back in Miami. Tamara got the sense from them that their Miami life was becoming less fulfilling; Nadine’s congregation seemed to be more transient now and Wilson’s job was no longer challenging. He was considering looking at other mechanical job opportunities.

Soon Peter came by to pick them up to go to the Winsberg home. When they arrived, Scott, Claire, and Barbara greeted them. Terence wasn’t there; he hadn’t returned to Maryland yet. The Alexandres and Winsbergs spent the next half hour chatting, getting to know each other, and then Werner and Greta arrived. When Nadine met Greta, the energy in the room suddenly became intense; Peter staggered as the emotional waves washed over him and Tamara grabbed his arm to steady him.

“Shit,” Peter whispered. “Where did that come from? Grams and your mom?”

“Apparently,” Tamara answered.

When the two women shook hands, they both stopped and stared at each other intensely, smiling. Then Greta broke the silence.

“A soul sister!” she said as she hugged Nadine.

Greta turned and looked around the room and her eyes lighted on Tamara.

“Tamara, please come join us,” she called to her. To Nadine, “Let’s go somewhere quiet to talk.”

Nadine just nodded; Tamara could see that her mother was in her “spirit-communing” mode.

Greta led them to a room that was fixed up like a study and gestured for the others to sit on a couch there. She pulled up a chair in front of them and began to speak.

“There may be just three of us gathered here now, but I sense the presence of multitudes of others and this is unprecedented in my experience.”

Nadine nodded. “Indeed. There is a turmoil in the spirit world; I know that I am quite sensitive to certain stimuli that my manman—mother—taught me about. I, too, feel presences and some feel strange to my senses. It appears that you have your own protectors, as you called them? Tamara mentioned that to me. I sense presences about you; with Tamara as well.”

“Yes,” Greta smiled. “And I, too, sense that Tamara has a host around her; many more than when I first met her.”

“I can sense them much better, now,” Tamara said. “It happened like I told you back at the hotel, Mom. Also, Papa Legba seems very curious ‘cause he hears a language he hasn’t heard for a thousand years.”

Greta looked at her intently. “You actually can communicate?”

Tamara shrugged. “In a way. It’s not like a conversation. I get impressions of thoughts or emotions which seem to come from outside. Sometimes they’re in response to something that I’m thinking about and sometimes the thought just pops up. It’s mostly emotional feelings that I’ve learned to interpret.”

“Oh, goddess,” Greta breathed. “You’re able to do something that we völur can do but only after years of training.” At their questioning expressions, she continued, “Yes, I’ll need to explain. I’ll tell you a bit about my own background and ancestry; this may be long, so I hope I won’t bore you.”

“Oh, no, please do tell us,” Nadine said. “In my studies of cultural anthropology, I researched many societies and cultures, but all were ones which currently exist. The presences which seem to be within you, but aren’t—they are like a shadow of a presence—seem to be ancient and very foreign to my senses.”

“Ooh, this is so exciting,” Greta gushed. “Two people who understand! I know of just three others like me from the old religion. There are belief systems which have what anthropologists call ‘shamans’; I’m not completely familiar with most of those, other than those of the East, like the Hmong and Shinto shamans. There are shaman belief systems in many Asian countries like Korea, Philippines, and central Asia. I have much less knowledge about other cultures and how strongly their shaman component operates. I know that some authorities ascribe shamanistic rituals to certain native American groups. Europe, Africa, and South America also have... oh, goodness, please excuse me. I get into lecture mode so easily...”

Tamara grinned. “I looked you up, Greta, and found out that you’re an anthropologist at Westphalia and you’ve been appointed as the chair of anthropology in that new institute at Westphalia, Columbia Institute of Economics. You should know that Mom has a degree in social anthropology.”

“You don’t say? I’ll need to explore that with you, Nadine. But please let me tell you what I learned after meeting Tamara and a bit about my ancestral history. Before I met Tamara, I only knew a little about Vodou, enough to know that the movie stuff and references to voodoo dolls and things like that are nonsense. After we spoke, I did a little self-educating, and my goodness, how much more there was to learn! I found out that Vodou emphasizes the importance of honoring ancestors and spirits—the lwa, as you call them—and that the lwa are thought to act as intermediaries between the human world and the divine world. I read how each lwa has a distinct personality, and some actually have more than one. They occupy their own areas of human influence, such as love, healing, and wisdom, the natural world too, and even life and death. The lwa are seen to be powerful forces for good or evil, blessings or curses, all dependent on the worshiper’s attitude and how they are served.

“I saw how Vodou is an integral part of Haitian culture and has a rich history, going back to Africa, and how it got combined with Catholicism because of how the slaves were forced to abandon their religion. That forced Vodou to evolve and adapt, incorporating elements from Christianity.

“Well, I do know from my own years of education that different religions and the mythologies of different cultures have many similarities, regardless of where in the world they come from. Look at the similarities of the different creation stories. There are similar world-wide flood stories too. So there was no surprise when I learned how there were similarities between the mythology of my own culture, Norse mythology, and the Haitian culture which practices Vodou. Both have a strong emphasis on the natural world and the spirits that inhabit it.”

“That’s exactly true,” Nadine told her. “There is one major difference between those belief systems, though. With Vodou, although we venerate the lwa, we don’t worship them. Ours is a monotheistic faith and we worship the One God. The Norse religion was polytheistic, correct? Odin, Thor, Loki, Freya, they were worshiped, as I understand the mythology. But... oh, that’s right, this was not always the case. Vodou evolved from the religion of the Fon people of the Kingdom of Dahomey and was polytheistic until the influence of Christianity forced its adherents to change.

“Yes, we were originally polytheistic. In our mythology, the supreme god of the Fon, Ewe, Yoruba, and Igbo people, Nana Buluku, is the original creator and gave birth to Lisa, the sun spirit, and Mawu, the moon spirit, and the material which forms the rest of the universe. Mawu and Lisa are considered to be a single entity, Mawu-Lisa, a female-male androgynous spirit, and are the world-creating spirits; in a four-day period, she-he-they created the world, organized its land and oceans, and then made plants, animals, and humans. So you are correct in how the mythologies are similar.”

Greta smiled. “Thank you; that was fascinating. Now to my own background. The old Nordic religion and the worship of the ancient gods was banned by the Christians for more than a thousand years, so it has only a very small group of adherents nowadays. My mother was one of them and she traced her lineage all the way back to the Norse Vikings from before 800 C.E. The women of her line were known as völur or seeresses. The singular term is völva. After Christianity began to spread throughout Scandinavia, the völur became known as witches and were banned. So like many banned religious practitioners, they went underground. The art was taught by mother to daughter; it’s a type of shamanism, in this case, old Nordic. The Vikings also had a tradition of male seers, but that line disappeared; anyway, none were known to my mother.

“The primary ritual activity that’s practiced by a völva is called seid. This is an ecstasy technique that’s so similar to many other religions that it’s eerie. Religious ecstasy is known in Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, Sufism, Hinduism, as well as other religions... and in Vodou, as I learned. Seid allows the völva’s consciousness to leave the body to seek knowledge and to commune with helpful spirits to try to answer questions about the future and get advice for her supplicants. Her soul is believed to travel to other universes or to the spirit world during these trances; in the ritual, the seeress experiences an altered state of consciousness.

“In the ritual, the seeress is seated on a special seat and holds a ceremonial staff, and in the traditional ceremony, she would be surrounded by her acolytes, a group of young girls, who chant songs to evoke the spirits; the chanting helps the seeress attain her state of trance.

“In the society of ancient times, these seeresses occupied an elevated personal status. They were highly respected and were sought after to help settlements or households which were facing difficulties. One such case is chronicled in the ‘Saga of Erik the Red,’ where a völva is called to conduct a seid on behalf of the whole community. She arrives together with her acolytes—the saga calls them the ‘spirit helpers.’ When the ritual begins, the girls chant their songs, calling forth the spirits, and the völva is given the needed advice.

“Now, like those of Vodou, the practitioners of the old Norse religion, Forn Sidr, which means ‘the old way,’ have been persecuted for a long time—but that Norse persecution goes way back to 800 or thereabouts, when Christianity became dominant in Norse lands. This is why we have so little knowledge about the ancient practices—the practice of the rituals got stamped out. This means that the current practice of what is now known as ‘Asatro,’ the belief in and worship of the Norse gods, doesn’t descend from the beliefs of the Vikings. It’s closer to a modern reinterpretation of the old religion, a revival of sorts, since no sources written by actual practitioners exist. What exists are only short accounts in the sagas and these most likely have been tampered with by later Christian interpreters.

“Much of the practices used in the modern revival of the religion are based on accounts in the Poetic Edda, also known as the Elder Edda, and the Prose Edda, or Younger Edda. These are works from Iceland that were compiled in the thirteenth century from earlier works and together they constitute the primary sources of skaldic poetry and Norse mythology that exist. It’s from these two works that we know about the cosmogony, religion, and history of the Nordic tribes, but they’re told through the filter of Christian storytellers.

“And at long last, one old religion group, called the Forn Sidr after its ancient name, got official sanction from the Danish government in about 2003. It’s now the largest of the Nordic religion societies and was officially formed in 1997, but there are less than a thousand members, I think. The adherents make up small congregations located all around Denmark.

“My family descends from these old Viking traditions, and my maternal line has had seeresses in it going back to those ancient times. I’ve been trained in the ancient ways, but there are so very few of us now, with the modern world luring young girls away from the old ways. So I was overjoyed to find that Tamara had a spiritual presence so very much like my own and the other völur whom I know. And I see that you, Nadine, also share in that unique characteristic.”

Nadine smiled. “A few others of the manbos whom I know are very much like me, Greta. My people all tend to be very spiritual, even if they aren’t strictly observant. We are all in tune with nature; that’s our African heritage, and our spirituality comes from the many generations of adversity my people have faced—natural, in the form of hurricanes and earthquakes, and human-made: tyrannical governments and terrible economics. We turn to the only ways we can find joy, within ourselves or through community cooperation.”

“Yes, I know that faith and religious worship are very strong in the face of adversity,” Greta said. “But I did want to mention something else about spirituality that I have noticed that Tamara has brought to us, my family, that is.”

Nadine nodded. “I know what you want to discuss. It’s about Peter and what you sense about him, isn’t it? Because I sensed it when we met and it’s not possible that you could have missed it.”

Greta laughed. “That’s it exactly. It seems that my grandson has acquired something in addition to his astonishing empathetic abilities.”

“Yep, I’ve noticed that,” Tamara said.

The other two looked at her expectantly.

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