In her trance the Volva or Wicca or Witch would be told by her guardian spirit or goddess of things that were to come. She would find answers to the future and to the needs of those begging her guidance.
Some cultures call such a person a shaman. Among the Hebrews it was usually a man, but sometimes a woman had the gift. The Bible refers to these Seers or Prophets in numerous passages:
Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing - Exodus 15:20.
(Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for [he that is] now [called] a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer) I Samuel 9.
"And when David arose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer . . ." 2 Samuel 24:11.
The gift of foreseeing the future is suspect among many Christians and most particularly Lutherans. We much prefer to say that the days of seeing into the future are past. Our task now is to prophesy, that is to proclaim, what has been earlier revealed.
The world of entertainment, however, does not avoid such questions. We humans are inevitably driven by a desire to know what the future holds for us. The TV series Flash Forward takes hold of this deep curiosity with the premise that some perverse group has somehow given the entire population of the world a two and one-half minute glimpse into the future by putting them all into a trance at the same time.
The Nazis also embraced this desire to know their destiny. And they believed that the ancient Nordic gods had it planned for them. This fact led to the creation of Hulda Schwarz, the Volva/Wicca of my upcoming novel Freya's Child.
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