Season of Spirit - Part I

Hello friends!

I meant to check in before this, but...well. I guess I can commit to being good at at least one thing at a time.

For anyone following me on Facebook, I committed, back on June 21st, that I'd do one spiritual activity once, every single day, from Midsummer to Lammas.

So here is my first checkin, of sorts!

I am LOVING this so far and am so glad I've been pushing myself to it.

I did miss one day, very shortly after I started. I had been working in the yard all afternoon, and come 10:30PM, went to do something and just was so damn exhausted I couldn't even dream of it. I know myself well - I would have fallen asleep the minute my ass hit the meditation cushion. But I did spend the day working my land and my garden, so I gave myself a pass that day.

A few things I'm taking from this experience:

- I can very so varied in the types of spiritual experiences I have. I have done meditations, I've done offerings of water and smoke to the gods, I've done brief meditations at work. One night I sorta forgot until it was almost bed time, so my spiritual practice for that night was to try and induce a specific sort of dream as I was falling asleep. (It didn't quite work, but I'd try it again!) I spent some time polishing my drinking horn, decorating its wooden stand and fancying up the leather adornments on it. There was a day at work that I also spent outside, staring at a patch of grass and weeds, trying to pick out how many different species I could find among the plant life. (A LOT)

- I've known my guide most of my teen/adult life, and yet there are things I've never known about her, things I never noticed. It was wonderful to take some time to reconnect.

- I've been smudging SO SO MUCH. One of the first things I've been doing at the start of my meditations is a quick Smudge of myself, my altar space, I let the smoke waft over my deity spaces, etc. It's nice to feel so energetically clean!

-   I met with an old friend in a space I used to know very well. It made me sad to know it's been left abandoned, like an afterthought. We cleansed and healed the space and it felt worlds beyond better.

Tonight I got a random phone call from someone looking for members of my family for a family reunion - he lives on the land my ancestors lived on when they came here from Germany in the 1700s. I'd love to go if somehow that can happen - and maybe it's a sign that tonight's practice should be an offering of sorts to my ancestors.

Glorious Staycation

Our Beltane ritual went a little...off. My wife took a tumble down our back stairs and sprained her ankle, so our ritual was set aside for something a lot more simplistic.

After Beltane, the weather was largely chilly, wet, constant rain, and I've been a bit blah.

But this past week was hot (HOT!), sunny, and a wonderful time to get out and work in the garden.

Over the long weekend in May, I got out and built the first of our raised vegetable beds.

Finally working the earth in our yard - not just cleaning, raking and fixing, but actually getting in there and adding, building, planting - is such a wonderful feeling. 

I'll be the first to admit my spiritual life has been pretty slack, aside from the spiritual feelings of working the land and being a steward to our space.

This was meant to be a longer update - but I've got some pretty cool projects on the go and the starts of some plans to get this blog off the ground again. 

Merry meet again! 

Spring Ahead

Long time no talk, friends!

I am just coming off a lovely sushi dinner at our favourite restaurant for my birthday, surrounded by wonderful friends (and plum wine. Mmm....)

The latter part of winter has knocked me around a little bit. Our work has been bizarrely busy in a way I haven't experienced in a good few years - and that sort of constant balls-to-the-wall nonstop repetitive sort of business gets draining on me very quickly, and our team has felt splintered and not very efficient.

So my plan to get deeper into practice and into reading again hasn't really worked. Thankfully, even when I am not seeking the spiritual, it finds me, these days.  So I haven't been bereft of my spiritual life, even when I'm not actively seeking it out as I want to.

Ostara was lovely fun, dying eggs like we did last year - and feasting on roast rabbit. Winter is still overly present, with snow and freezing rain all this past week, and miserable temperatures. I've had a cold, my wife has a cold, Garm and Nootl have been under the weather.

 My fingers are itching to get out and clean up the blown in trash in the yard, bag up last year's leaves, get planting. But that has to wait until there's at least no snow!

Ostara is a sort of "new year" for me - it's the anniversary of my spiritual group coming together for the first time, as the four of us - and comes at a time where, last year, I purged my life of a lot of negativity and toxic influence, and learned how to breathe again. The past 12 months were spent in a glorious sort of lazy recovery period - wasting free time because I had the time to waste, in the best way. Just relaxing, playing video games, making art, colouring, making incense, taking strolls in the woods. Doing a lot of inner reflection, rediscovering parts of me that were buried beneath sickness and exhaustion.

But now I feel it's time to move again. Stretch out my brain and put it back to work. So I've taken up learning some things I didn't know. I asked my father to teach me a bit of guitar, since I miss making music and it gives us a chance to connect. I've got an ocarina ordered from a woman in quebec - I have a cheap one, but is severely out of tune and therefore hard to learn on. I want to be able to sit in the trees and play softly as a devotional to the wights and spirits around me and I've loved Ocarinas for years.  I've been using DuoLingo to try to learn some German. Even just enough to have a foundation to take a class later. I'm loving it, though I've noticed when I don't know a word my brain wants to interject with French almost immediately - so I'm probably going to end up speaking "Grench" or something. I am going to push myself this year to get outside and be more active - get back into birding and shoot for a "big year" (2016 was the first year in several that my species count didn't increase over the previous year!) I got a new book and a couple of phone apps on mushrooms, fungi and edible plants, so I want to get out and learn more about the nature around me.

I'm trying to think of a way to set myself goals - and make sure I stand to them. That was one thing that was so good about being in IDGAF - held to a standard other than my own, I stick to things a lot more solidly.

For now, I am going to hope to rework my altar for spring energy shortly (even if outside feels like anything but..) and post with some pictures!

Speak soon!

Glad Yule!

Hello everyone. I hope your various holidays have been treating you well!

I've been busy but also less busy than normal for this time of year - it's pretty awesome, actually.

We've had an abnormal month weather wise - with several small snowstorms back to back, with a lot of freezing and thawing. The past week has been our more typical mild rainy December - but it was weird to see snow and ice on the ground, and have minus double digit windchills, before mid-January.

Garm and I did our runic initiation - I pondered for awhile on "sacrifice", and what I could possibly offer to the Alfather in exchange for the knowledge of the runes -  what I could give up to Him, that I had not already given. And then I had a small epiphany - as Odin sacrificed himself to himself, so should we - not a sacrifice to him, but to ourselves.

I gave it some thought-- and decided to shave my head.

 

It may seem silly, but as a woman, a shaved head is an unusual thing, usually relegated to butch lesbians (and I am a lesbian but definitely not butch) and cancer patients. Women with shaved heads purely for the fuck of it are rare.  I also have a very strong attachment to my giant floofy mane of curly hair. But this is something I've always wanted to try, just to shatter expectations of me and embrace my femininity in a different way. Nootls did the honours.

It's already growing back a little (I may shave it again because the low-maintenance nature of it is lovely for the winter.)

Back at the middle of the month, I started mixing together some ingredients to make a kyphi-style incense. I say kyphi style, because the general proportions and amounts of things were more or less following this recipe, but used a pretty varied list of resins and herbs, trying to make a sort of "Northern Forest" scent - evergreen resin, birch and pine bark, and juniper berries. I just combined the wet and dry ingredients tonight, and since benzoin powder wasn't available, I rolled the little balls in ground gum arabic to help it set. I had way too much "wet" ingredients left, so I mixed up some other stuff on the fly to combine with it, just for the hell of it - waste not want not! We'll see how it turns out!

Tracking my recipes in a messy, scribbly fashion.

My winter altar, updated just a little with some red berries (dried multiflora rose hips)

My incense, all balled up and ready to cure for a bit before use! Fingers crossed! 

Yule was lovely - we had a small ritual with our friends, had a candle processional through the house, put up our tree, and drank warm mulled cider. Christmas, which I celebrate in secular fashion with my friends and family, was lovely also. 

Together my little pack and I will feast on roast goose for Old Christmas (otherwise known as Little Christmas) since our schedules didn't align well over the holidays and Yule fell in the middle of the week.

I got out for a good long forest hike today - it's been long overdue, and was delighted to confirm that wintergreen carpets the ground in my local woodsy park. It's harvest-able far enough off the main path that I feel safe using it.

Such a pretty little plant!

 I've taken to trying to understand my hamr - here in the concept of the shape one's soul takes if it wanders away from the body. I've taken the shape of a Grey Goose for over a year now - but another animal has also arisen as prevalent. I've mentioned her vaguely before - a creature with a rather snarly reputation perhaps being debunked by modern science. I'm not quite ready to talk about her yet - we're still learning to understand one another and her role as a fragment of my soul.

But winter brings with it many journeys inward.

I hope some brightness shines for you--in my part of the world, the worst of winter lays before us, with the heaviest snows and most treacherous ice and the cruelest of the cold winds-- but knowing that now each day will be a little longer and brighter than the last gives me hope.

May it for you as well.

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.

Dirt. Worship.

It feels weird to be stuck at a desk again.

I took a week vacation, the first since December (which has been waaayyy too fucking long), and spent nearly all of the week toiling in our yard.

With my mother's help, we got most of the leaf litter cleared away, and my wife and I were able to get beds rebuild, cleaned, dug, and are slowly refilling them with soil.

We were left with a decrepit old metal and wood bench - I acquired fresh wood, metal primer and rust paint, new bolts, and outdoor urethane, and am slowly getting everything ready to rebuild it good as new in a lovely deep red colour.

During one of our hardware store trips, we got some herbs (3 types of lavender and one of garden sage) to plant, as well as a foxglove. We have dahlias, fairy lilies, and marigolds to put out.  I have 5 happy plum tomato plants in pots on the deck.

So many nights over the past week, I've stumbled in the house and straight to the shower, exhausted and aching and filthy. Head to toe dirt. Smeared on my arms and legs, inside my gloves, smudged on my face, under my fingernails, on my glasses. Soil and old muck and rust and dust.  From digging out rocks from garden beds, from pulling weeds, from carrying bucket after bucket of fresh garden soil, from slipping and falling trying to disconnect the hose from the tap again. Grass stains on my knees. My neck hurts, my legs are covered in bruises, I have hedge thorn scratches on my arms. I have the start of a swell farmer tan. Sweaty. Hair at the back of my neck is wet, between my breasts is dripping, my glasses keep sliding down my nose.

And I fucking love it.

This is building a relationship with our land - this is paying in blood and sweat and labour, in hopes of love in return. Beautiful flowers, the shade of massive trees, some day soon, sweet fresh veg; hopefully cherries one day from our cherry tree. There are some random blackberry canes here and there that I refuse to remove - others sprouting up that may be wild raspberry. And so much wonderful green.

We had a small barbecue for Canada Day, and for the first time I walked barefoot in the grass. My grass. Our grass. I was always a bit shy to, before, not knowing what rocks or sticks or broken glass were back there. But no more. I walked barefoot, sat in it, laid back and looked up at the sky.

I had to pull some roots out of a flower bed - I suspect they belonged to one of our big trees. I wove them into two little wreathes - one I hung, in offering, on the tree - one I brought in for my altar. It needs a re-do, some freshening up, and then I will show you.

<3

Dirt is wonderful.