15th November 2024
Tuonen Portti’s 4-Year Anniversary Celebration at Suomenlinna

As the fifth year commenced, it was time to reflect on past achievements and the efforts through which we had served as instruments. The founders of the moon tribe, profiled by their Dionysian and left-hand path alignment, gathered under the November supermoon illuminating their path across the dark waters of the Baltic Sea. While a familiar darkness embraced its own, the participants were conscious of traversing through the yawning maw of the sea. As they plunged into its icy jaws, the future would be severed as surely as a ship’s propeller would slice through any fish that crossed its path.

Many of you are already familiar with Konstantin Tuonihovi’s Pit and its related excavation efforts. A hallmark of the Portti lies in its metaphorical digging as well—an unrelenting pursuit of knowledge.

For the celebratory dinner, we discovered a hidden gem in Suomenlinna where we savored a Baltic-inspired menu of rustic fare. The diverse meal reflected the annual cycle, manifesting with particular richness in the North. At this darkest time, its light shines brightest for those who perceive the Underworld. Once our soul sacks were nourished, we stepped out to the shoreline of the sea fortress, where a pair of swans watched us, and the blackness of the nighttime sea seemed no paler beside the mythical river of Tuoni. In Kalevala, the Finnish national epoch, the swan is connected to the river of Tuonela, and Finnish incantations often consign illnesses to a bird’s feather.

There I send you,
Under the wing of a goose.
Into the feather of a swan.
To the rib of a whitefish,
Into the liver of a sea lamprey.

(Ancient Incantations of the Finnish People)

On the other hand, Väinämöinen sought words for his spells from beneath the swan’s feathers. The Sampo was forged partly from a swan’s quill tip. The Sampo, in turn, is an allegory of various forms of growth, the most relevant to the Portti being related to printing technology, enabling us to draw from the wisdom of past masters. The internet has similarly proven to be a tool serving as a life-thread for our international mycelium network.

Given our chthonic nature, it is fitting to emerge from the virtual world and bow before the Ancients to offer gratitude. Annual Rituals serve this purpose. An appropriate offering site can be created without a fixed altar, anywhere, serving as a way to defy the burdens of soul-eroding consensus reality. Through reconnection with the true natural world, one attains the liminal where the portal of the Sacred opens most brightly. If a stray tourist wanders into the scene, it need not disrupt the event. Often, such occurrences happen only after the ritual ends, signaling the fading of the Sacred time.

From its inception, Tuonen Portti has engaged in this kind of mobile devotion at remote liminal sites, one of which is Suomenlinna sea fortress. This annual gathering was also held in its Katabasis chapel.

Encounters with animals are intertwined with the experiences of our collective’s members, often seeming to serve as intermediaries for the numinous. After leaving the swans, a spider appeared at the sacred core of the altar we constructed, defying the late season. Thoughts turned to the Greek Arachne and the Fates’ woven Life Thread, but perhaps this time it referred to the Hindu deity Indra’s net, symbolizing the universe as an interconnected web of mutual connections and interdependence? At the very least, one of the central themes of the Ritual was the international mycelium network, aptly symbolized by the web. Furthermore, a creative weaving master fits well with the collective of artists.

The third and final messenger took the form of an owl pair hidden in the darkness, hooting a farewell. Domestic folklore associates them with the Devil’s birds and death. Besides the owl, there are other dark-clad death birds, such as the woodpecker and the aforementioned swan. Perhaps the next time you hear birdsong, you will also hear the words:

“Remember death.”

Text: Carita Hännikäinen