In collaboration with Lilli Tölp 

Photo by Andrej Vasilenko

In Finno-Ugric cultures, the world tree or sky-reaching tree was believed to connect and maintain the unity of and communication between the three realms constituting our world: the shadow world, the middle earth, and the upper or “other” world. Shamans were the ones who had the knowledge of travelling between these dimensions.  

Their journey was facilitated by the use of various practices and natural substances, one being the use of the juniper plant. The plant itself has a complexity of meaning and its smoke was also a common means to clean the stagnant energy in a person’s “field” and the environment as well. 

Interdimensional Transmission explores old indigenous beliefs and practices and their present-day relevance, and reinterprets the spiritual journey of the ancient shamans: it evokes the cleaning of our “skins,” both in terms of our immediate bodily skin, the emotional and mental skin, and the environment as a broader external layer of our skin. By travelling through the so-called axis mundi represented by the world tree, the liberation from what was once titled as so(i)litude may happen, for the sake of a deeper connection with earth, its creatures, our ancestors, and ourselves.