By Gabriel Hartley • 2 March 2021
During this morning’s meditation I was introduced to a being I had not yet met before—Ukko, one of the primary ancient Finnish deities and figures from folklore. Traditionally, Ukko is seen as the sky god of Finland, often associated with the Norse god Thor, hammer and all, as the god of thunder.
I had not set out to meet him. I was seeking more information regarding my current engagement with the local spirits of the land here in Fiskars when the angel Gabriel suggested that I meet someone he thought could help me in that regard. My attention was first drawn to the large boulder that faces our kitchen window, which this morning—one of the first sunny mornings of late winter as we head into the Spring Equinox—was for a brief moment shining in the sunlight. I have been drawn to this boulder several times this week, and this morning’s experience ended up giving me some idea why.
My Previous Experience with Ukko Koli
In reality, my first introduction to Ukko was in late August of 2012 when Anna took me to the Koli National Park to see the fairies she had seen there as a child. The park is dominated by two peaks high above Lake Pielinen, Ukko Koli and Akka Koli. Ukko and Akka are the consorts of each other, Ukko representing the male sky energies and Akka representing the female earth energies. They are often presented as the ancient grandparents of the Finnish people.
This trip to Koli proved to be significant for Anna and me in more ways than we had understood at the time. We did have our fairy encounters (which I will record in a separate post), and that experience led to our getting engaged to be married in the space between Ukko and Akka Koli. (We had no awareness of the symbolism of this location in the moment.)
For my purposes here, I simply wish to point out the way in which the two peaks on the lake shore manifest the cosmic relations we have always been led to memorialize in place names. My point is that place names are not accidental—they indicate our deeper understanding or intuition of the relationship between place and meaning. On a geomantic level, in other words, the peoples who named these peaks Ukko and Akka Koli understood on a fundamental (if perhaps unconscious) level that this spot in reality embodies the energies we associate with these two elemental deities and, beyond them, to the cosmic relationship between Earth and Sky that they unify as this sacred couple.
It is now Wednesday morning, 3 March 2021. After writing much of the material in the introductory paragraphs above, I spent most of yesterday researching references to Ukko online, including images from several famous paintings of the Finnish Romantic era, a movement in art and culture also known as Karelianism. This was because some details from the message I received during meditation yesterday did not seem to fit exactly with my understanding of the role of Ukko in traditional Finnish consciousness. In order to sort these details out, I went on to simply present the message I received and then dive deeper into its details to see whether they do in fact fit with the common sense of who Ukko is. I am now confident that this information is accurate. What follows is the current state of my understanding of these matters.
Plasma and Transition
As I was drawn into greater concentration on the energy emitted by the boulder in front of our house in the play of morning sunlight, the voice of Gabriel explained that the boulder sits on top of (or functions itself as) a major interdimensional portal. I was reminded of such portals that existed on the property we rented at the Blue House in Athens County from 2013 to 2016. I was next told that there was an elemental being who oversees this portal, and that this being is Ukko. Ukko here embodies the energetic earth forces of the boulders that cover the Finnish landscape.
I mentioned to Gabriel at this point that I had earlier read that Ukko was considered the Sky God, not the Earth God (who traditionally is represented by Akka, the Earth Mother). I was then told that this notion is partially true in that Ukko, as the God of Lightning, oversees the plasma forms of etheric earth energy. Ukko is the mediator of the portal transitions from Earth to Sky, just as lightning connects the heavens and the planet in its plasma bursts from cloud to earth. The problem with our usual understandings today of the relationship of heavens to earth is that we ground our perception in physical materiality. In this way, we create a strict demarcation that separates Earth from Sky that only exists in our minds.
The Etheric State of Matter
The real foundation of the material world is its etheric nature. The fluid plasma state of matter provides us with a more appropriate understanding or representation of the fundamental state of earth and sky. So Ukko, I was told, is not simply the Sky God but the God of material transition, of the ever-changing states of matter as varying degrees of condensation of etheric substance into what we see as physical matter. In this sense, Ukko IS the thunderbolt. Ukko is like the dragon, then, the being who in its very being manifests the union of earth and sky, of the etheric and physical states of matter, of the passage from one state to another. For this reason or in this way, Ukko is the Guardian of Portals. Ukko is the bridge between worlds.
One key to this transmutable aspect of Ukko’s nature is his hammer. His hammer is made of stone and wood—earthen elements—and with it Ukko creates the bursts of unifying power and transition that we see in lightning bolts. The hammer stone reminds us that our conception of earth as solid matter and sky as airy nothing is belied by the fact that meteors—sky stones—fall from the heavens to the earth. The other planets are themselves embodiments of various states of matter. The space dust that drifts through our solar system is itself matter as we normally conceive of it. And the hammer’s handle comes from the trees that, rooted in the ground, reach up into the skies. So our common modes of visualizing the separate bounds of earth and sky do not fit the reality behind their relationship—a reality often depicted in the unnoticed details of our representations.
Stone, then, which along with water dominates the Finnish landscape, while appearing to us as among the densest forms of nature, has its own proper etheric state. This etheric state of stone is more “real” than that which we call physical reality, just as quantum physics has stated during the past century. The vibrational hum of matter in motion sings the songs of Ukko, the God of dynamic transitory states of being. And when we embrace the dynamism at work in a boulder dancing in the late winter sunlight, we also tend to Ukko’s nature as our link to the sun itself, manifested by the electromagnetic charges that give rise to phenomena such as the aurora borealis.
A more proper understanding of Ukko’s nature, then, must pay attention to his role as the manifestation of our etheric elemental nature. And this, it seems, is my task, in part, as I engage with the energies of this stone that looks into our kitchen window. This portal serves as a site for future understanding and revelation.
