Winter

I've been so quiet!

I got an indigo giftcard from work - I'm going to be ordering some books, getting back on track with my reading.

I had plans for a post delving yet again into the powerful death-vibes of 2016. The darkness swirling in the world, the realizations and understandings I've come to over the past several months. I was going to write about emotional abuse and gaslighting, about my stepping away from a toxic environment and how long it took me to wake up from that.

But y'know what? Fuck that. The world is in a hellhole right now and I can't bring myself to feed the yucky feels any longer.

So I'm going to quickly sum up some of the awesome fucking shit that's been going on.

I've been celebrating every sabbat/esbat/etc in style. My group of four (myself included) have made a point to get together. Our rituals are loose, informal affairs, but our energy is wonderfully in sync, so even if we allow ourselves to be casual and silly, we still have great synergy and I can feel that we are connected. The love in our little group is unbelievable. My wife, is of course, my wife, my best friend, the love of my life. Garm has come to help in the yard many times, we feed him supper, he took my wife to the emergency room the other night to get some stitches looked at, while I was stuck at work. (She's absolutely fine by the way.) Nootls has helped us around the house, we've hosted her on the couch as she has quite a drive to get home, we've babysat her dog. She just hooked us up with Reindeer hides, mine I'm using as a throw on the couch.

Mabon

I managed to source a suckling pig - Yule is in the middle of the week and I have no time off, so we'll likely do our great Yule feast a little later - but I am so beyond excited.

We got our yard cleaned up, and a few things planted - it snowed today, and I still have raked leaves to bag, but come spring we can start fresh on much better footing than this time last year. We got to harvest some garden sage and lavender from our herb garden.

I finished reading the first half of Taking Up the Runes - I have the elder Futhark memorized, and their meanings, and finally made myself a set of runes. 

I have other rune books to read and more study to do - the runes are a lifetime journey, I feel - but I'm beyond happy to understand them even at a baseline now.

We bought a sewing machine - my wife and I - and we each made a cloak. I'm madly in love with mine. I then made a viking style apron dress and tunic to go with it. So I finally have real, handmade ritual garb!

Stylin'

I did some major altar work as well. My current altar I inherited second-third-?? hand, and it was battered and covered in sticky tape residue. I did love it despite (or because of?) it's well-loved look, but I wanted to refresh it. I attacked it with sandpaper, sanded parts of it down to bare wood, others simply deep enough into the finish to smooth over the gouges, the old adhesive gunk. I then refinished the whole thing with a more matte-paint-like stain and replaced all the hardware. It has a fresh new look now and I adore it. <3

 

 

Looks good as new!! There are "before" pics back in my blog somewhere I'm sure...

I also worked at making a small Odin and Sleipnir statues for the Alfather's altar. Sleipnir I felt was particularly genius. I bought two paper mache unicorns at a local arts n' crafts store...and murdered them to make a hybrid 8-legged steed.   

I mentioned snow.

Well that was a shock! I can't remember the last time that the first snow I saw in the year was an actual "snow storm". It's not quite cold enough to stick here as we're near the coast, so we got mostly wet slushy snow and rain - but still more than flurries. The wind was intense and COLD this morning.
I need to get those damn leaves bagged up before they get buried. It's supposed to be another rough winter.

Secretly I'm excited? I love snowstorms and snow days and being curled up with a warm drink listening to the wind howl outside. It's a bit scarier when you own a house vs. an apartment, but damn, it's still so comforting.

I've been busy-busy the last few weeks, but feeling very driven. I have a new gorgeous leatherbound book to make into a proper BOS - I have plans to use pressed plants, colour, polaroids - and make it a mishmashed work of art. I'm ready to bring back the activity into other parts of my spiritual life - not just rituals, but meditations, real practice, get reading and blogging again.

Here's to the rapidly approaching end of this majestic shit-show of a year!  

Of wolves among men

Some very exciting spiritual things have been afoot. I've been working steadily at getting through Taking Up The Runes. I had tried once and found myself overwhelmed, but I think I was ready to learn them this time, since I feel more comfortable with my learning. Paxson has earned herself though the dubious distinction of writing the only book I've ever willfully defaced with both pen and highlighter. Long after the book was bought I found out she has some yucky "subtle racism" stuff going on - nothing neo-nazi but just... naive and facepalm worthy, so I've had to make some, um, corrections. I'd have turned to a better book, except there don't appear to be any - every rune book I've uncovered has some nasty "folkish" heathen baggage attached, so it's come to "learn what I can, take the rest with a grain of salt". Sigh.

But the past week or so, I've been thinking a lot about certain animals, their place in myth, spirituality, and science.

A new-ish totem creature has been emerging for me, one whose symbolically ascribed meanings tend towards gluttony, savagery, attitude for days, wild animal abandon, and general orneriness. It's a little known critter, and upon good old fashioned learning about the animal and it's behavior, is not nearly so ornery as is thought. I've decided to learn what this little creature has to teach me, not just in what others think of her, but in what she feels like to me. And this got me thinking.

I read a piece I stumbled upon from March, (Link) about wolves in heathenry, how many people call themselves "wolves among men" or "wolves of Odin" as a sort of fancy title for themselves. The article pondered that wolves are enemies, preying on the weak, gluttonous and greedy and dangerous - that they are not things to emulate, they are things to defend our communities against. The wolves who accompany the Alfather do so because one of his aspects is death, so the wolves are not the most positive side of him. Wolves are the dangerous outsiders stealing our sheep, and threatening our very lives when we enter the woods.

 If those qualities truly belonged to the wolf, I'd be inclined to agree that "wolf people" are perhaps to be avoided. But I happen to know a wolf person, and I also know a decent amount about wolves. So the question I asked myself was - when we work with animal spirits, symbols, archetypes, totems - should we rely only on the mythology of these creatures - or, should we look too, to what we know about them in the modern day?

Wolves are not dangerous antisocial predators among their own - far from it. Wolves are born and bred to be social, it is part of their DNA. The pack hunts together, lives together, shares in caring for the young, and protects each other from their rivals. Wolves are loyal in that way,  and their familial bonds are crucial to their survival. While wolves are territorial, packs do interact, and "lone wolves" may find packs to join and become a part of a community in this way.
As for gluttony, it is true that wolves gorge massive amounts of meat at a kill - sometimes more than 20 pounds in a sitting. But wolves also succeed in the hunt less than 10% of the time - this is not gluttony, but opportunity. An animal who may spend a week or more between meals must make the most of what he can. If moments of joy are few and far between in a world rather at odds with how a lot of us would like to be living, drinking every drop that comes your way is making the most and best of life while you can. (To be fair though, calling yourself a "wolf among sheep" is perhaps something of a predatory statement - or perhaps you're such a rather inept wolf that penned sheep are all you can catch. )

The wolves that appear in Norse myth are certainly not benevolent by and large, but they have their place, too. Fenrir will slay Odin at Ragnarok, and play his part in the end of the world, but when the dust settles, a new world has begun. Death is part of life - you can't have one without the other. In our modern world, the fear of the wolf can subside - though their place in mythology is important, they are an intrinsic part of the world we live in, the cycle of life and death that is woven in all of nature. If you would see the wolf as only a force of destruction and chaos, remember that our planet was born a ball of fire and gas, and that everything eventually breaks to become something new.

So many of these animals were once our ancient foes, and we were right to fear them, for they are mighty and formidable - but now, as the natural world vanishes before we are even done understanding it, remember that between wolves and men, only one kills for sport, consumes more than he ever needs, and doesn't look after his brothers. I've learned the hard way this past year, that sometimes the enemy is already living inside the gates.

I think I'll stick with the wolves.