Spirits of the Baltic North

Spirits of the Baltic North: Shamanism, Mythology, and Ancestral Magic

Dr. Vidas Šimkus

Where ancient pine forests meet the storm-grey Baltic Sea, a spiritual tradition older than memory stirs back to life.

In Spirits of the Baltic North, Lithuanian scholar and practitioner Dr. Vidas Šimkus illuminates one of Europe's most overlooked indigenous traditions — the shamanic worldview of Lithuania and Latvia, preserved through centuries of conquest, forced Christianization, and Soviet suppression. This is not a tradition reconstructed from dusty archives alone. It is a living current, breathing through dainos folk songs, sacred bonfires, and the whispered prayers of those who never forgot.

Drawing on decades of fieldwork, Romuva community practice, and personal initiation, Šimkus guides readers through the mythological landscape of Baltic cosmology — the thunder god Perkūnas, earth mother Žemyna, fate-weaver Laima — and into the practical arts of the krivis and ragana: trance induction through sacred song, soul retrieval, ancestral healing, and communion with the veles, the restless dead who walk among the living.

Part scholarly excavation, part experiential manual, this book offers accessible pathways into authentic practice: fire ceremonies on the shoreline, plant allies like mugwort and rowan, altar-building with Baltic stones, and the healing power of ancestral memory.

For seekers of European indigenous spirituality, practitioners of shamanic healing, and anyone carrying the unresolved grief of displaced roots, Spirits of the Baltic North is both lantern and invitation.

The ancestors are waiting. They always have been.