What Lives, Evolves

“Do one thing today,” he said. “What you do matters less than that you find something you can do. Your foundation has been washed away, between losing your home, the wreck, and all that has happened since then. You need to rebuild it, and, contrary to what you may be told, building it out of pebbles will be just as good as building it out of a solid stone. The important thing is to have something beneath your feet. You can glue them all together later, when you’re no longer dangling in the open air.”

“I suppose I… haven’t really been told much that it’s all right to do that. That, if you haven’t hauled back an entire mountain to put under your house, it’s just going to collapse on you.”

“It did collapse on you. Simply, shit happens. The idea that anyone, whether a spirit worker or a mundane human or even one of us can be so careful and do things so perfectly that there will never come a terrible storm in life is ludicrous and also cruel, because it places the blame for Life always on you. Sometimes there is nothing you or anyone can do. Simply that you are still here, still sitting there talking to me… Many people would have stopped entirely. When someone’s life is on fire, they often can’t try to manage things in more than one world at a time, because they are focused entirely on surviving in one of them. It requires more energy than a healthy person has, Shannon, and you are not healthy, but you never left me. I don’t doubt that it would have generally been easier to have done so. But you are so hard on yourself that you don’t think that that means very much. You don’t think that working to stay near us and in contact with me counts for much, when held up against things like whether or not you were able to meditate or make offerings or do spiritual writing. What is the goal of all of that, if not to make it easier to draw near to us?”

“I think I felt like it was my job, and I wasn’t doing my job. I was being lazy or slacking.”

“Few people go through periods of starvation through sheer laziness. Not having enough well-being or money to take care of your mortal body is a crisis. Not having a home is a severe crisis. The trappings of a spiritual life, the things you do and ways you practice, are important, but they are less important than those kinds of things. If you were part of a mainstream religion, such as Christianity, would you consider yourself any less Christian if you were unable to go to church for a long time, but still, as they say, kept Jesus in your heart?”

“Well, yes, probably.”

“Don’t hurt yourself for needing to live through something any way you could. You are still alive. That is all that matters. Start from there. Remember that you are alive, and breathe.”

Pagan Blog Project – Eir

I have never had my choice of gods and goddesses to pick and choose from, deciding which I would like to work with or under and which I am not that interested in creating a relationship with. If any of them wished me any ill, likely they would’ve been prevented from reaching the stage where they show up in my life and nudge at my mind all of the time. I do have my protectors (gods, themselves).

Not all that long after we were married, I had what felt like a barrage of new people showing up in my peripheries. Because I was so busy with being evicted for being disabled and having a stint of homelessness, then being hit very hard by my CFS/ME and fibro, I didn’t follow up on any of it, much. For the most part, they were content to sit on the sides and occasionally buzz through my mind to ensure I hadn’t forgotten them.

One of them was Eir. Some people seem to say she prefers to only work with or to train women. There’s precious little I can do about that — I am not a woman. But she has been insistent, and along with her, though farther into the peripheries, Menglöð.

This past month, we were able to replenish a little of of the herbs and oils needed to do much useful work. It will take a while to build up, and to perfect blends. I missed the delivery today because I didn’t realize it needed a signature, so I will have to get it on Monday. Pity; it would’ve been nice to try some trancework or meditation with some of the oils.

As such, Eir surged to the forefront. Wanting to know what happened to my books on herbalism, I should fetch them immediately, I should get to work on learning all of the things that went stagnant in my brain and stuffing more information into it. I should bend my finances toward all of this work. Because we are all sick, and we do not need to be this sick. There are a number of herbal things that will help. And I should do this and that, I should make dream sachets to sleep better, I should find the right stones for my issues and keep them close to my skin, I should, in short, get my shit together immediately and get to work.

In addition to this, the land spirits gave me an idea on how I can make something to better connect with the land when I am indoors: they suggested I take some of the gravel beside the house, which is currently buried under a lot of snow, unfortunately, and some of the twigs from the trees, and various other things, and keep it in one of the boxes I have to use as a focus. I should also buy or make bindrune staves for the corners of the property. Protecting and healing this area of land is my responsibility, and it overwhelms me more than a little.

I need to sort through my time carefully, so that I am not neglecting anyone.

I feel like I’m flailing, a little. Wondering what I am and what I am going to be. It doesn’t really surprise me that my marriage is not some sort of All Important thing — not the One Thing I Do. I don’t think that was why he married me. He saw something in me, though I don’t know what, and wanted it. Wanted to hold it in his hands and make it grow.

A Bit of Silliness

Since I am still having a tremendous flare, here is a little bit of (accurate) silliness between Freyr and Thor from the Loki Ragnarok manga.

Fibro Flare

I’ll not do a F is for Fibro Flare PBP post, but I’m having a rather bad one. The very cold weather and 20″ of snow we had around the weekend kept up with another inch or two of snow, and we had icicles longer than my arm hanging from the roof by our kitchen window.

When I went out yesterday to get my ride to the train station, I slipped on a large patch of ice and fell on my back. Then I had to walk around NYC all day carrying a very heavy bag: I decided to buy wine from Trader Joe’s, because the TJ here does not have a wine store, and TJ sells very good wine at obscene prices; I picked up five bottles of red for about $20, and got a bottle of ice wine as an anniversary gift for V and Brand, which was itself $20.

Ice wine is made is extremely small quantities and it is mind-blowing. I am sure Freyr and Freya will both love it passionately and I think Eir also will. So would Sigyn, undoubtably. If you are very close to Sigyn or Freya, it might be worth looking into. It can be ordered online, and you can ask around at local wine shops.

I didn’t know that V strongly prefers white wine. I don’t know where I gathered the idea that, like the two of us, he preferred red, especially when the only wine I can ever remember him buying has been white (he typically purchased sake, because there was a convenient shop with an excellent selection when we lived in the city).

There’s a place that will do local delivery for only $5. And they have mead, which I have none of here!

Devotional Work

We have been talking about prayer beads.

A long time back, Freyr specified the number of beads he wanted me to use, and I found stones that would be ideal, and have generally only been waiting for a time when I could afford to purchase the materials and assemble it.

I have been interested in making prayer beads for other people for a long time, but have similarly been restricted by finances. It’s also occurred to me that many people who buy prayer beads have absolutely no idea what to do with them or how to use them, so it might be good to write prayers, adorations, or other devotions to gods and spirits I may make sets for in the future, so that I will have them on hand.

In addition to needing to work out the prayers for my own set.

I would like to write a much longer post about prayer, but recovery from the car accident is slow, and I am feeling very stressed and very thin.

Today while I was resting, I worked with the spirits of the trees living on this section of land and the spirits of the land itself — many of which were not clearly defined entities who were completely separated into something easily understandable. I felt myself sinking deep into the ground and felt the earth around me, and I knew that I had been guilty of being prideful and hubristic without realizing it, without having realized I’d created some sort of chain of being and placed myself on it above other things — that I was, in truth, the same as the microbes in the soil and served a similar purpose.

Healing the land and healing myself are likely connected. As are all of these meditative thoughts about devotion and prayer and walking through a land to bless it.

Tabulating

it is a little ironic, a little amusing, that what caused the extremely hideous bruising and panoply of burst blood vessels on my chest was freyr’s antler pendant. the tine comes off of a rounded triangle of antler about an inch long, that has been drilled top to bottom and strung horizontally, so the tine hangs down. one of the rounded triangle edges happens to face my chest.

it is possible that i had trapped the pendant there when i put on my seatbelt.

i have bruising that’s been developing with increasing tenderness in my abdomen. it isn’t really where my seatbelt goes, so i am thinking that because i had my cane in the front with me, it was probably driven into my stomach by the airbag. there was nothing in my backpack, which was also up front, that should’ve conceivably been able to harm me.

i went to sleep yesterday with our wedding cord wound many times around my waist – the usually unwieldy length of it suddenly showing its reasoning.

i have been able to put my antler back on. i’ve needed to moisturize the bad scrapes on my neck. i haven’t tried putting on the slightly-bigger-than-a-choker necklace i also wear, but wrapped it around my wrist a couple of times.

i don’t doubt that our gods saved our lives and kept us from even worse injury.

the heart is mainly in the center of the chest, not off to the left like everyone believes it is.

i feel like, and perhaps it’s silly but i don’t particularly care, he shoved me back into my seat to protect me.

Pagan Blog Project: Carolitic

I was asked to start doing the PBP, because I have interesting things to say, they said. As we’re into Cs, I suppose I will try to get back through the other posts, if possible, because it’s not all that late, and I did write a post spurred by my attempt at writing about my adoption by Loki and his family (which was then titled Aridity).

Carolitic is an architectural term meaning ‘adorned with leaves and branches.’

I don’t always recognize the gods in art that are meant to be him. Sometimes they are completely and utterly foreign. Sometimes semi-passable. I’ve never found anything that was exactly right. What I do have is a picture of a person I found on tumblr, that V edited for me, which I can’t post, because I don’t recall the original photographer, or the model, and it’s altered without permission, regardless. Even the picture is not perfect, but it will do. It is, of course, of a completely human man, looking completely human.

Freyr does not always, though the human-like shape is very convenient and he seems somewhat to favor it, but I couldn’t say that with authority. Likely he changes his shape depending on what sort of beings he is interacting with.

He is meant to be a god of fields, fruit, bountiful harvests, grain, and so on. Honey, also, via some UPG I seem to share with several people. I have seen him that way. Golden, brighter than the sun, running his hands along the tops of the grain, or riding his horse through the shining fields, laughing in the summer…

But I also see him, increasingly, in the forest. I repressed the idea because I felt like I was treading on the territory of people who associate with one or another horned god figure, and I do not believe all gods bleed into one.

It stayed, however. And I kept reblogging deer, saving pictures of deer, thinking about his antler, and the piece I wear around my neck, reblogging forest after forest. I felt him too much in some of these pictures and I could not shake it. It was not going to go away.

The Vanir are old. Very old. What was there before there were tilled fields? There were forests.

And so I see him at times in a somewhat humanoid shape, with branching antlers, in the deepest parts of the forest. He reeks of power. It rolls off of him like the mist formed by his breath. And I wonder what I am seeing, if this is what came before, if this is what there was before humans began shaping myth with their belief and taking axes to trees to create fields to grow their crops.

It is always a silent, still, long moment, of looking, and waiting. I think he wants to know if I will come to him like that, with ivy twining and moss and lichens making themselves known. Leaves caught in those antlers. His breath is heavy, as if he had just been running and stopped suddenly. I do not think he runs on two legs, though he stands on them well enough.

I have not gone yet, because I have been afraid of what it means. Of saying, yes, I love this god whom you’re very familiar with, and in some of his aspects, he is absolutely nothing like what you’ve read or been taught, and no, I am not confused, not confusing one god for another — I know my husband, if nothing else — and not being a very mushy polytheist. To say, yes, this is Freyr, and he is a very old god of the forests, long before there were people.

It does not change who he is most often now, of the fields of golden grain, but this part of him has not gone away.

It is my wont, whether intended or otherwise, to lean toward mysticism.

Tonight I will embrace him.

Toward Spring

I feel the spring, though there is no reason for it: there will be five inches of snow tomorrow, and more of it on Wednesday. I feel it in the ground, the trees, the life around me. Straining upward, reaching for the longer days and the warmer nights.

He is nearer, in a way I find difficult to describe, but I feel it in the same way I feel the land around me. Awake and reaching upward, uncovering the sun from its bank of slate grey cloth, inviting it to caress the land again.

And it does.

And in response, the sap ceases its sluggish repose, and the bulbs in the ground stir themselves, and the animals will soon dream themselves awake.

Rearranging the altars

It’s a fairly common thing to color the water used in Buddhist offerings with saffron. Saffron is, of course, very expensive, and I haven’t been able to afford it, but V. bought me some while we were in the spice aisle at the store. I will make the saffron water when I can and start using it in daily offerings.

We had previously been to the dollar store, where we found an assortment of things that we thought would be good for the altars. Small wooden boxes, moss, stones, glass bowls and vases. I’ve wanted to make something for Freyr for a long time, because I don’t have much for him: really only a dark brown clay pig, aside from my jewellery.

Hela told Brand to rearrange the order that things are in, in terms of the shelves, which is reasonable and convenient. I need more room to use the offering bowls more effectively.

I will make something for Freyr and incorporate the pieces of the trees in the yard that offered themselves into the area. He is so intertwined with nature/land spirits for me that it seems like the right thing to do.

We bought a Christmas cactus, as well. Being past its flowering season, it was heavily marked down and in good condition. They blossom so beautifully.

Aridity

I had been strongly considering participating in the PBP, but the first relevant word that came to mind for me was ‘Adoption’ and that peeled open a festering mess I wasn’t quite expecting.

I don’t have contact with any human family. It has been a painful mess since I was twelve and understood the depth of my father’s disinterest in my existence (I didn’t even know him, really — I saw him a couple of times when I was very, very young and never again after I was about five — but I knew where he lived, and I spent some time sitting on my bike across the road from his house, thinking about what would happen if I knocked on the door) and there were levels of increasing understanding of my mother’s hatred for me, starting with being told that I should have been aborted when I was four or five, to worse things and repeats of that and similar statements, until I was seventeen. I had already left home by then — going halfway across the country and working full time from the moment I was sixteen and living with awful people actually seemed better than living with her, and I’d already dropped out of school due to a nervous breakdown when I was fourteen — but during a phone call in either late 1998 or early 1999, she reminded me that not having had an abortion had “fucked up her life.”

I never stopped being depressed about it, or wounded. The best I could manage was ignoring it.

When Brand’s family found out about me, they were completely horrified by how neglected and hated I had been, and immediately decided that they would adopt me. He’s said before that there is nothing more important to the jotnar than family, but I didn’t realize that extended to adopting unwanted children to ensure they had family, too. That was probably a bit stupid of me, but I’ve internalized the idea that I am loathsome and unwantable by anyone very well (which I have to admit doesn’t do my romantic relationships any good, either).

I feel like a feral cat, haunting the edges of this civilization and scattering whenever someone looks at me or comes to close, and only creeping in when no one’s paying attention, or is busy elsewhere. I’m prone to raiding the trash for scraps because I can’t handle coming in to my place at the table. I don’t know how to come in. I can only tolerate it for a few minutes at most before I have a desperate urge to run away and be extremely alone. Alone is familiar; alone is what I know.

At our wedding, so many of his friends and family — and part of my brain was trying to consider the idea that they would think of me as part of their family also, while the rest of it was skittering away from that thought and relegating all of these people to his, his, his. No our anywhere involved. His house, his bed, his everything. What am I, exactly, inside my own mind? A doll that he felt sorry for. And decided to take home, try to clean it up, sit it around tea parties with other dolls and stuffed animals. But I don’t have a mouth. I do not know how to make sounds.