Chaga, the forest's black heart

A tale of fire, spirit and healing

The forest is quiet before it wakes. Not quiet in the dead way, but in the listening way. The kind of stillness that exists just before something happens. The birches stand there like old guardians, white and weather-beaten, scarred by frost, wind and time. It is in these scars that the chaga grows. Not as a flower, not as something beautiful in the ordinary sense, but as a dark, charred wound – a sign that something lives in the borderland between life and death.

The chaga does not look like medicine. It does not look like something you should take into your body. It looks more like the remains of an old fire, as if lightning has struck and left behind a piece of night in the middle of the tree trunk. Yet it is precisely here, in this black heart of birch, that one of the forest's oldest teachers dwells.

This article is a tale of chaga. But even more, it is a tale of a ceremony – of how people have once again learned to listen to plants, fire and spirit. Of how healing is not only about active compounds, but about relationship. Of how a fungus can be both medicine and being, both substance and consciousness.

The forest's kinship

In Sami tradition, nature is not something you own. It is something you are kin to. Trees, stones, animals and plants are not resources, but relationships. They have spirit, will and memory. When you enter the forest, you do not enter a neutral space, but a living community.

Gathering chaga is therefore not a hunt in the ordinary sense. It is a form of encounter.

You walk slowly. You let your gaze glide over the birch trunks. Not to search greedily, but to recognise. For the chaga does not reveal itself to the impatient. It often grows high up, on old trees, where the bark has split and the tree has struggled long. It is found where life is hard, where resistance has shaped strength.

When you find it, you stop. You lay your hand on the tree. You ask – not necessarily aloud, but with the body and the heart – whether it is permitted to take. And you never take all of it. The chaga must be allowed to keep growing. The birch must live. For healing that destroys its source is not healing.

Afterwards a gift is left behind. A little food. A sip of tea. A quiet thanks. For what is taken is not merely a physical substance. It is a relationship that opens.

Forgetting and rediscovery

On the Norwegian side of Sápmi, chaga was for a long time almost forgotten. Modernisation, efficiency drives and modern medicine slowly pushed aside the knowledge that could not be standardised. Nevertheless, the tradition lived on on the Russian side of Sápmi, where chaga was still drunk as tea and used as part of everyday and ceremonial practice.

When chaga again began to show itself more clearly here, it did not happen first and foremost as a trend or a dietary supplement. It came back as a teacher.

Through regular use of chaga tea, several people experienced that the effect extended beyond the bodily. The senses were sharpened. The dreams clearer. The intuition deeper. An understanding arose that chaga worked not only through its chemical compounds, but also through its presence.

The question arose quietly but clearly: How does the chaga itself wish to be met?

When the ceremony took shape

The answer was not drawn from books or systems. It was drawn through relationship.

Kyrre, who through many years has worked at the intersection of Sami tradition, shamanic practice and plant knowledge, took the initiative to ask further. Not to create a new ceremony, but to listen. Together with a Sami elder, guidance was sought – not from humans alone, but from the spirit of the chaga itself.

In 2008, during a three-day ceremony in Finnmark, the chaga ceremony began to take shape. It emerged slowly and without haste, like the chaga itself. In 2010 the ceremony was shared publicly for the first time, and has since been carried on by Kyrre and others in Sjamanistisk Forbund, always with the same core: respect, relationship and presence.

Opening the space

The chaga ceremony begins long before anyone drinks tea.

It begins with the fire.

The fire is not merely warmth, but a living gathering point between worlds. Before the ceremony begins, the hearth is consecrated, often with juniper. The smoke rises slowly and binds together earth and sky. The space changes character. Attention gathers. The everyday steps aside.

At the entrance to the ceremony place, chaga is burned on both sides. The smoke marks the transition from the ordinary to the sacred. When you pass through this opening, you step into a space where other rules apply – a space marked by stillness, respect and presence.

The brewing – waking the chaga's spirit

The chaga is placed in water and set over the fire. It does not boil hard, but steeps slowly, often for two to four hours. This is work that demands patience and presence.

While the tea slowly darkens, prayers and intentions are directed toward the spirit of the chaga. Not as fixed formulations, but as a focused presence. In this tradition, the brewing is understood as a way of waking the chaga's spirit – through warmth, time, fire and attention.

It is not only the active compounds that are released. It is also the relationship.

The inner work of the ceremony

When the chaga tea is shared, the space is already changed. The stillness is deep, but living. Many experience that time loses its usual form.

Before drinking, participants are invited to address the spirit of the chaga. To express their intention – silently or aloud – and to open themselves to the work that is to take place.

The task of the ceremony holder is to keep the space open and focused. This is often described as hard spiritual work: to maintain a clear and stable spiral in which the chaga's spirit can work without being directed.

Experience and aftermath

The experiences vary. Some feel warmth or movements in the body. Others see inner images, or experience emotional release. Many describe a deep calm and a feeling of being held by something older and greater than themselves.

The chaga's work is rarely dramatic. It is strengthening, gathering and grounding. It reminds the body of its own intelligence, and the human being of their place in nature's cycle.

The work does not end when the ceremony does. For many, the process continues in the days and weeks that follow – in dreams, insights and a changed relationship to forest and nature.

A living tradition

The chaga ceremony as practised in Sjamanistisk Forbund today is not meant as a reconstruction or a fixed form. It is understood as a living tradition – rooted in the Sami view of nature, but open to dialogue, experience and further maturing.

Through the ceremony, participants are invited to restore a relationship that many have lost: the relationship to plants as living beings and co-creators in healing processes.

The chaga still grows quietly in the wounds of the birches. It does not wait for everyone. But it answers those who approach with respect, patience and a willingness to listen.

Read the ceremony description here

Sources:

Medical and biological research on chaga (Inonotus obliquus):

Zjawiony, J. K. (2004). Biologically Active Compounds from Aphyllophorales (Polypore) Fungi. Journal of Natural Products, 67(2), 300–310.