I have heard the term oracular seidh used. How does spæ differ from “oracular seidh”?
There are many different interpretations of what spæ and oracular seidh are. However, in general there are two schools of thought when it comes to spæ and oracular seidh. The first school refers to what they do as spæ, and uses a technique that involves summoning spirits to them, and very rarely spirit jounreying to obtain information. They maintain that spirit journeys (called in Old Norse hamfara) were never used for spæ of the type seen in Eiriksagarauðr (Eirk the Red’s Saga), and that it is a seperate art. They also maintain that seidh or seiðR is a seperate art altogether. This method can be read about in the article An Alternative Spæ Rite. There are a few that use spirit journeying, but refer to what they do as spæ. There are no hard and fast rules regarding the use of the terms oracular seidh and spæin this regard. The second school, the one made popular by Hrafnar uses a spirit journey variously to Hel or the Well of Wyrd (or both) to obtain information from the spirits there.
