Haelu and Seidr: Manipulation

The last time I wrote about Haelu within the context of Seidr, I wrote about the importance of haelu for the practitioner, and of staying hael. However, in a group conversation a couple of days ago, I realised that I had been neglectful in my exploration of the topic at that point, that I had missed out yet another fundamental way that haelu might be said to underpin the practice of Seidr.

Although there is a lot of debate as to what Seidr actually is in modern circles, chapter seven of the Ynglinga saga is quite clear on what it was perhaps considered to be:

By means of this he could know beforehand
the predestined fate of men, or their not yet completed lot; and
also bring on the death, ill-luck, or bad health of people, and
take the strength or wit from one person and give it to another.


It is on this manipulation of 'luck' and 'health' that I'm going to focus in this blog post. As previously discussed,'Haelu' is a word that can be translated as being both 'luck' and 'health', 'wholeness' and 'holiness', and a hero was no hero unless he was hael. There was no constant with haelu, as with physical health, it was something that could wax and wane in a person, something that could be worked for, fought for, gained, lost, and frittered away.

And where there are no constants, there can always be manipulation.

What if I told you, that rather than picturing haelu as being an either/or thing, that it would be better visualised, again, as with physical health, as a continuum of sorts?

Something a little like this, perhaps?

Now what if each person could be visualised as landing somewhere on that continuum, you know, depending on how hael or unhael they are? If you could somehow assess yourself in terms of haelu, where do you think you would stand on that continuum?

When viewed in this way, would it not be reasonable to consider those that are further towards the 'unhael' side of the continuum to be easier to curse and harder to heal, and those that are further towards the 'hael' side to be easier to heal and harder to curse?

The way I see it, there are two main implications for modern Seidr practitioners if we are to accept this paradigm:

1. That yet again, the importance of Seidr practitioners working towards being, and staying hael is is further emphasised.

2. That if haelu can be manipulated, either positively (healing) or negatively(cursing), we could potentially learn something about the mechanics, in other words the *how* of that positive manipulation using surviving magico-medical texts (such as the Lacnunga). Furthermore, in using those texts (after filtering out the obviously foreign influences), not only can we discern methods for protection, healing, purification etc., but we could also potentially discern something of the worldview from which they were born, and (if so inclined) extrapolate the means of negative manipulation.

Baby

Hey there blog, it's been a while.

And a whole lot of change in the house of Birka.

You see,I became a mother about two and a half weeks ago in a process that was dramatic and drawn out (when is childbirth *not* dramatic though?). Pregnancy wasn't easy for me, and between the hypermobility in my joints that almost saw me crippled and out of work by week twenty, the bout of scarily high blood pressure at the end, and the pelvis that wasn't very conducive to birth, my body seems particularly unsuited for carrying and having babies.

Which is ironic seeing how getting pregnant took over four years of trying in the first place, and I'd wanted an all natural childbirth with no interventions, only to end up with the birth with ALL the interventions.

As I've said before, it's a good job I've got a sense of humour, and really, when I think about what I'd hoped for vs what actually happened, moreover, what *had* to happen for the sake of both of us, I do laugh some.

Some people talk about natural childbirth as being almost a transcendental experience, the pain putting them in an altered state of consciousness. A friend told me that I would see the disir during childbirth.

Through my three days of induced labour, I don't believe I saw anything or experienced anything as transcendental as that, but on the final day, things seem to shift on a dime.

I'd spent all night in some approximation of the dreaded back labour, mostly flopped over a yoga ball because it was the only position that didn't hurt as much as the others. Tensing up through another contraction, a nurse came in that we hadn't met yet - nothing new - but her demeanour was so different. Instead of waiting for the contraction to be over like the other nurses did before talking to me, she began to talk me through it, in terms of energy manipulation, and I followed. This had been my third night of no sleep and being in pain, and day number three was about to start with no progress since my admission on the first night. The contractions, while strong, were sporadic - my body was failing me and any dreams of a natural birth were disappearing faster than free beer on a Saturday night in Manchester.

It's an odd feeling to have your body fail you. It's hard not to feel disappointed or take it to heart, as though you somehow could have avoided this had you only done x,y, and z back when you were 21 and knocking back the beers as though the future didn't exist.

But it's good that we humans are inventive, that some of us carry the spark of inspiration, because there was a time when that kind of body failure would have spelled death for my child and I.

Strangely the nurse took the lead over the midwife (even though the midwife outranked the nurse) and laid out the plan for the day, if I agreed, they were going to get me an epidural to get me some rest, and push the induction hard while I rested. After nights and days of no sleep and pretty much nothing but pain, I agreed.

First point, don't believe anything about epidurals just feeling like bee stings, you don't feel bee stings scraping along your spine bones, and trying to hold still while something is going into your spine area while still dealing with a back labour contraction and the shakes is really not fun. Really. Once it's in though, the relief is almost instant, you feel your body parts, can still move them even, but you can't feel any pain - kind of like when you're at the dentist and have your mouth numbed for work.

At this point, floating in and out of consciousness ( I really was exhausted), it was as though the nurse, midwife, and a tech (who was from my country) came to embody aspects of goddesses, of Matronae, or at times, even Frija. It's entirely possible that I was a little delirious, but regardless of what the day would bring, I felt safe, like everything would eventually be ok. Hope restored.

At around four in the afternoon though, it became clear that nothing was working for moving this baby, she seemed to be getting distressed, moreover she wasn't responding to stimulation, and so I told them to cut me open.

The surgical team were scrambled pretty quickly, and I found out that oddly, the Dr that would be doing my section, a Dr whose name means 'new world', spent a chunk of her childhood living in Skemersdale (a town bearing an old Norse name 16 miles from where I grew up in England).

I've had some really weird experiences before in life, I've done some pretty crazy things, but to this day, laying on an operating table, trying to keep still because the shaking had gotten so intense it felt like my bones would crack, with my insides out, while an ex-resident of Skemersdale that was named for the land I'd come to live in sliced through whatever she needed to to get to our baby, is probably the most surreal to date.

As it turned out, my pubic bone was too flat for our baby to get past, they hadn't even managed to get the catheter in properly, as it had caught on that bone leaving a partially full bladder that had to be deflated in surgery in order to get the baby out. My dream of natural birth would only ever be that - a dream.

And perhaps all of this sounds like it was terrible - a far cry from that desired birth in which I would have used my womanly powers of birthingness to bring our little one into the world - but it really wasn't. It was actually the most amazing day of my life, and I'll never forget the sight of them lifting my little love over the curtain, or my husband's overjoyed cries that it was a girl, or the surgical staff cooing over how pretty she was even covered in blood and screaming, with her bruised nose from where the contractions had bashed her against my pubic bone. I'll never forget the way she tried to latch onto my cheek, or how I cried in disbelief and wonder at my daughter even as I struggled to breathe, and the relief that she was ok, that we'd made the right decision. I've seen some incredible things in life, but not one of those sights even comes close to the sight of that little girl for the first time.

The next morning, that tech from my country brought me breakfast, with a cup of tea that she'd made using her tea stash, and as I sat drinking my very British tea brought from home by another ex-pat, and eating toast with the very American concord grape jam on it, I couldn't help but be struck by the old world/new world themes at play here.

Two and a half weeks on, sitting here in my living room, with my baby, our hard-gotten child of two worlds, (finally) napping in the bassinet beside me, I can't help but feel amused by it all.

It's good to have a sense of humour.

Stingy Recons

If you read my previous post, you'll know that I have quite a lot to say about the state of Seidr/Shamanism groups online, especially with regards to the mental and physical health of some of the participants/leaders. To some degree, I did cover some of the gripes that some of the less informed have regarding those of us that study, but thinking on it, I did forget one main gripe that has amused me for the past week.

This gripe is twofold and it goes something like this, 'if you read, you don't/can't practice', and then 'reconstructionists are stingy with their sources'.

Now here is my question, why the fuck should we just dole out information that we spend huge chunks of our personal time digging up, to people that obviously see us as being somehow less 'spiritual' than themselves? Why would anyone in their right mind give in to such a blatant sense of self-entitlement? I bet to their minds, we're also 'put there' on this earth to serve as guides to their 'spiritual development' or some other such bullshit like that!

Well newsflash, we're not a public service.

Moreover, even if you do give information, depending on how well it fits with their UPG, you may find yourself getting all manner of crap for daring to come out with it, or being told that that is obviously wrong, and that 'we couldn't know that anyway' (because...you know...UPG).

So with this in mind, I put forth that by 'being stingy' with the information (but only the stuff they want to hear because it supports their fantasies), we are actually protecting them from losing their spiritual edge (because we know that if you read, you can't possibly do anything of a spiritual nature).

For those that want to sully themselves in this way, I propose adherence to a similar model as drug dealers do, i.e, you have what they want but it's 'bad' for them, and they pay you to get it.

Now, I'm off to go find a crowbar to prise that tongue from where it is firmly wedged in my cheek.

For those of you that celebrate Yule, I hope you have a lovely time, because I won't be, I'll be just reading, because that's apparently all people like myself ever do. Trollololololol.

Shaman Sickness, Scholarship, Discernment, and the 'Oh noes, someone I don't know on the internet said I'm not teh realz Seidrworkerz'

I don't often post about more esoteric items on this blog. For the most part, I'm very private when it comes to this stuff and far more comfortable talking about more 'tangible' subjects, at least with strangers, and especially on the internet.

However more recently, I've found myself participating in groups focused on Seidr and Shamanism (even though I don't practice Shamanism in any sense - traditional or Harner-style, of the word). I dunno, I just guess I miss not having people around that I could talk to about this stuff, and bounce ideas off (once an appropriate level of comfort has been reached, of course!). What I've found for the most part, however, has been a complete trainwreck. Seriously, it's no surprise that mainstream Heathen communities generally consider those involved in the more esoteric side of things to be absolutely batshit crazy. This blog post, controversial as it is, is going to look at what I consider some of the most damaging and ridiculous aspects of this type of group.

N.B: While I generally disagree with the use of the word 'shaman/ism' outside of an Evenk context, for ease of reference in this post, I will however use the term.

Shaman Sickness and the Wounded Healer Archetype

Shaman sickness is one thing that I've seen talked about a lot in these groups. I would even hazard a guess that the percentage of sick (either physically or mentally) people in these groups is far higher than in more mainstream groups. However, if this is the case, why could this be? Moreover, in many cases that I've seen, why is it that the same kind of resolution recorded in traditional societies that have forms of 'shamanism', don't also seem to occur in these people? Why is it, that in spite of their alleged 'shamanic' status, these sick stay sick?

Traditional accounts of 'Shaman sickness' tend to speak of it as being a way for the spirits not only to get the attention of the would-be Shaman, but an elder shaman who would then train the shaman. To quote the Circle of Tengerism website (http://www.tengerism.org/becoming_a_shaman.html):

"The near-death experience of the shaman’s sickness is very traumatic. The would-be shaman suffers both mentally and physically. This is how the spirits get the attention of not only the afflicted, but of the local shaman. When the elder shaman is called to help, they would recognize the shaman’s sickness and take the afflicted as a student.

This does not mean that everyone who has a near-death experience is a shaman. It means that some people who have one have the potential to become a shaman. Those with the potential are called butur. Butur means “cocoon” in Mongolian. To grow into a shaman, they must accept the calling and be recognized and trained by an elder shaman."

Similar can be said of the Korean Mudang (shaman), and the shinbyeong (spirit sickness) that they exhibit, with the cure being the naerim-gut (initiation).

In other words, they don't stay sick, the sickness is temporary, as opposed to chronic, serving only as a vehicle for bringing a person to Shamanic practice.

However, in this new age sewage world, rather than being this vehicle to bring someone to the spirits, people seem to delight in the 'Wounded Healer' archetype, completely misunderstanding the original intent behind Jung's archetype. The person doesn't remain sick, the person is not constantly wounded in the sense of continual sickness or being physically affected, instead, to quote Jung's colleague, Kerenyi, the Wounded Healer refers psychologically to the ability “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sunlike healer.” In other words, those that have not already suffered, cannot heal as they cannot understand suffering. It doesn't mean that the person still suffers personally (except perhaps through memories and striving to help others). It is not some kind of beacon for sick people to gather round.

Moreover, physical feats have been recorded of Shamans in various cultures, especially during trance. There is also an inherent danger recognised in traditional forms of shamanism, be that the exposure to danger of attack from other shamans or spirits, or death from some of the entheogens used. This suggests to me that the Shaman in these societies needs to be physically, as well as spiritually healthy and strong. Aside from issues of race and culture, I would posit that many apparent Western shamans wouldn't be considered as colleagues by shamans from traditional groups, simply on the basis of physical and mental health.

In my view, this also is bourn out from a Heathen perspective in that a person who is unhael physically cannot be hael spiritually. It's haelu across the board - but I'll get into more detail on that in the section on discernment.

Scholarship

Another trend I've seen in these groups has been a disdain for any kind of scholarship with regards to Seidr or shamanism. Obviously, one cannot practice Seidr and Scholarship, they're apparently not inclusive of each other...

Oh yeah, says who?

I see the charge that we can't possibly know what the Seidrworkers of old ever did, that we have no information about Seidr, and that no one ever asked a Seidrworker. This is one of best cop outs EVAR.

Because as we all know, NO ONE has ever relearned an ancient skill based on the descriptions or paintings produced by non-practitioners. The Danish archer Lars Anderson of course never learned how to fire arrows at a speed that modern master archers previously thought impossible, through looking at old sources and experimenting:

Go Legolas, go!

No, it's far better to go off UPG and the work of some white guy that basically ripped off a load of different shamanisms based in different cultures, and then plugged them into a framework provided by early 20th century scholarship by people like that Romanian fascist Eliade.

And of course, in order to sell more courses and books, you need to make it as inclusive as possible, right? Can't tell entitled rich Westerners that they can't be part of something that looks cool because of reasons like culture, and such like.

Once again, to turn to the Circle of Tengerism site (something which was founded to try and educate and preserve the native traditions of Mongolian Shamanism):

"One should also note that shamanism cannot be separated from the culture that it serves. It is interwoven into every aspect of the life and world view of the people. To take it out of its cultural context robs it of its power and meaning."

And perhaps more ironically:

"If anyone claims they can make you a shaman in one weekend for a fee, you should think twice. If you were to walk into a martial arts equipment store and buy a black belt, this would not make you a black belt. There are no quick fixes. Beware of spiritual consumerism."

I would argue that recovering the practice of Seidr needs to be a threefold process that involves experimentation, UPG, and yes...study as well.

Discernment

Another curse of these boards seems to be the lack of discernment. Indeed, I would consider discernment to be a key skill for those involved in any occult activity - a skill that's as important as protection. And yet, it doesn't really seem to get much talk time.

There are so many angles to this topic too, it's really huge, and covers everything from discernment in more esoteric work (e.g questions like 'What does this entity project itself as vs what is it really?', or 'what is really going on here, is another practitioner pulling the wool over my eyes in order to make a claim?'), to discernment in the people you work with (e.g their motivations, their actual abilities, their knowledge basis, and their intentions).

In other words, discernment is one of the most basic and important skills we can learn to protect ourselves - yet we often overlook it for things like a sense of belonging in a group.

Scholarship can also be very useful when it comes to discernment in a more esoteric sense. For example, your UPG says that the Morrigan is a kindly old grandmother that rides on a unicorn, but all the lore on the Morrigan says she's a battle goddess. Chances are, in cases like this, you're deluding yourself. You're not discerning between your own personal fantasies and genuine spiritual experience. This doesn't mean you're a terrible person, just your monkey brain got away on you and you need to work harder on more basic skills designed to harness the monkey brain.

You know, as opposed to having a temper tantrum that nothing is how you want it to be, and then blaming the 'inaccuracies' on 'those damn Christians'...again.

Other types of esoteric discernment are harder, and not really something that can be rendered in text. This is really where having a teacher of some kind would come in handy, and this leads us to perhaps the most important type of discernment of all - the discernment of people.

People involved in esoteric practices are often possessed of complex motivations, some of them are good, some not so good. For example, the 'teacher' of a friend basically used 'teaching Paganism' as an excuse for having sex at lots of different burial sites. These stories of people being taken advantage of are ten a-penny too. When it comes to people that you may end up working with on as intimate a level as esoteric work often demands, the need for discernment grows one hundred-fold. So, how can you tell the real 'teachers' from the fakes?

Here are my main questions when it comes to discerning people that would be good teachers:

* How are their lives? Messy? Productive? Is there growth in their lives or only decay? Are they healthy and robust, or are they constantly sick? Are they always having to 'fight spirits' or claiming to have been cursed over the most minor slights (real or imagined)? Generally speaking, good teachers have their lives in order, they're hael. Never follow an unhael teacher under the misguided belief that they are some kind of wounded healer, as we've already said, the wound doesn't continue, it's more of a reference point for helping to heal and build.

*How do they deal with disagreement? Do they cast the person they disagreed with out, or do they take the disagreement and respectfully continue to disagree? The reaction a person has to disagreements gives you a good clue to the egos involved, and whether or not they need validation from others to feel good. This need for validation and to be considered a great _____insert title here_____, may also point to a narcissistic personality. Pro-tip: These are to be avoided at all costs, because they often turn out to be worst abusers.

* How often do they employ 'Checksums' in their work? Be those Checksums from historical sources, or in terms of follow up/questioning of witnesses to different events. This can also go for a tendency to blame all things on spiritual causes and a lack of acceptance that 'shit happens', or even any kind of rational explanation.

*Have they ever claimed to speak for a god in order to tell people what to do (especially if what the 'god' is telling you to do is suspiciously what they themselves have tried to tell you)? If so, run like hell.

"Oh noes, someone I don't know on the internet said I'm not teh realz Seidrworkerz

Finally we come to the final thing I've seen on these groups - that of trying to discredit the abilities of those you disagree with. Of course, when ego is attacked, it's an easy fix - as good as claiming those you disagree with are really sekrit Christians in more mainstream Heathen groups.

And really, it's pathetic, it screams a level of butthurt and injured ego on the part of the accuser, that one almost has to feel sorry for. I mean, if your ego is so delicate that you need to try and remove a person completely from the equation because you can't deal with them being around, then you have issues. Moreover, what the hell is this need to be validated by strangers on the internet that have nothing to do with anything concrete in your life? It's ridiculous. If they don't contribute to your house, or your life (and you theirs), then why the hell should you care?


Really, why do they matter?

Simple answer: They shouldn't.


This rant from a random nameless person on the internet that you really probably shouldn't listen to was brought to you by the letters 'K' and 'X', and the numbers '3' and '9'.

Toodle pip!

OPEN HALLS PROJECT CALL TO ACTION

Open Halls Project Supporters! HEAR OUR CALL TO ACTION!!!!

Now that we have your attention.

The Open Halls Project is about to begin an endeavor, and we would appreciate any assistance and support that we can muster. Recently, the VA approved the Thor's Hammer as a headstone emblem. However, we still cannot choose Asatru or Heathen as our religious preference! We have attempted to process the request to add those terms, but CH(COL) Bryan Walker, of the Chief of Chaplains, has stated that the US Army and the DoD are preparing a new system that will allow philosophies and other religious preferences to be added more efficiently. However, his expected ETA for this change is 'several years.'

We've already processed this request twice, with the support of the Asatru Alliance and the Troth. That was over two years ago now and we are being told we will have to wait even longer. The OHP would like to initiate a letter writing campaign to our legislators, in the hopes that putting congressional pressure on the Department of the Army and the Department of Defense will have some positive effect. We specifically are calling on those who live in a district run by a member of either the House Armed Services Committee or the Senate Armed Services Committee. These are the folks that can really bring some political muscle to bear for us!

I've drafted a standardized form letter for folks to use, if you so desire. We have also been in communication with several of our allies, to help begin publicizing this action. We are hoping you will write to your Senators and to your Congressional representative, we have tried to be patient, and allow the system to work, but there is no need for us to wait several more years for our service members to have the ability to choose their religious preference on their official paperwork! We want to make sure that the religious needs of our service members are ensured and we hope that you will help us take action.

The form letter is posted as a link below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/91wor6hgscuu79c/Draft%20Letter%20to%20Congress.docx">Form Letter

Please let us know of any interesting developments you hear about, by emailing us at heathenopenhalls@googlemail.com

Josh Heath - OHP

Finding Common Ground With Ancestors

When it comes to the question of ancestors and ancestor worship, the modern Heathen is in a peculiar situation. On the one hand, we know from archaeological evidence and various laws prohibiting the worship of the dead, that people in the Heathen period worshipped their ancestors. However, on the other hand, judging by the frequently asked questions that tend to crop up on ancestor worship, it can be hard to figure out how to honour your mostly-Christian ancestors, and still be a Heathen.

Indeed, if we are to honour our ancestors, one thing that we all need to face is that large numbers of them might not approve of us walking away from their religion. In a lot of ways, this is no different from navigating that ground with living relatives, and I think there are very few modern Heathens that haven't had to do this. Admittedly, I have been very lucky with my family in this. My family has a peculiar heritage of its own in that large chunks of my father's family were Spiritualists, and claimed clairvoyancy or healing. Having grown up with my own slew of strange stories linked to that heritage, I don't doubt any of those claims. Now one thing about spiritualism is that dead family receives a type of reverence. There is the sense that they haven't really gone anywhere after death, and that they're all still just hanging out watching over you. Or at least that's the mindset I grew up with when I was a kid. So with this in mind, ancestor worship should be easy for someone from a family like mine, right?

Well, in my experience, this isn't always the case. For while they may have believed in things like talking to the dead, and healing, and magic to some degree, they also had very definite ideas on *how* to do those things, and what lines should never be crossed.

When I was a kid, I would learn these lessons during my many chats with my father either late at night, or when he and I were travelling the country in his truck. As my father was mostly a healer, his lessons were based in that, and were something that I struggled with. It wasn't the kind of energy exercises he would teach me, or the surprise psychometry tests, or the going into trance thing, but the idea that I would ever have the same knack for it. Moreover, I thought their stuff, the stuff from my family was more than a little batshit crazy. After all, Spiritualism has all this weird turn of the century stuff going on in it, and it all seemed far too love and light for what I thought I needed to learn for dealing with the things in my bedroom that made it hard to sleep at night.

Over the years, I got further and further away from the ways of my father's family, and this wasn't a bad thing, I am who I am, my dad is who he is, and they were who they were. However like with living family, a gulf can arise where you feel their disapproval as surely as if they'd called you and screamed at you down the phone. Things don't feel 'right', offerings don't seem to go down well, and there's this sense of loneliness that comes.

With the living, the grievances are aired, and if your family is anything like mine, we all shout at each other, and then we're back to business as usual five minutes later. However you can't really do that with the dead, and sometimes, it might even take years to figure out what's not going right. At this point, some might say that some form of divination should have been done, or a Ouija board cracked out...except my family were against those things. For them, the only 'divination' acceptable was 'spirit', Hell, I've seen a ouija board session go really really well, and then when I've tried to call my family forth, it's gone completely dead. Nothing, nada, zilch.

The breakthrough came last month when my husband hurt his back, and I got the crazy idea to try and heal it by using some of the old family tricks. Settling down with him laid before me, I went into trance and began to channel the energy through me as my father had taught me, but then came to a point where I wasn't quite sure what to do. In spite of the whole 'not really feeling my family too much for a while and especially since I came to America' thing, I called out of them all the same. What I wasn't ready for, was 'hearing' my grandmother say 'FINALLY SHE GETS IT!', and Josh complaining I was prodding him in the back even though my hands were inches away. After I was done, he said it actually felt better, and by the end of the day, he was fine again.

So healing, the act of restoring haelu, of manipulating haelu for good seems to be the thing, the common ground that both I as a Heathen, and they as my ancestors can stand on.

And I think that's the thing, when we have those disconnects, as with our living relatives that we disagree with, I think the only way forward is to try and find our common ground with those ancestors that we feel in our lives, be that common ground a love of car racing, or healing, or a love of fine malts!

Our Ancestral Shrine

The Rites of Spring

These past few weeks have been busy attending to what I can only describe as the 'rites of spring'. Spring is one of those times of the year that leaves me feeling conflicted. On the one hand, I love the life returning to the world, the new shoots, the warmth... the green. But on the other hand, I know that all the green comes with a price for me; namely that the green stuff often makes it hard for me to breathe.

Last year was hard, I was a new person in a new land that seemed to hate me. I know that's an illogical thought, but there were times when my asthma and allergies were so bad that I thought this land would be the death of me. I really didn't want to be here.

But this year has been different, I still have the allergies and asthma, but I don't feel quite so strange in this land, and I think a chunk of it is the garden. I don't think I'll ever get to the point where I can run again, or to the point where I was training for a 5k, but the simple acts of pottering in a garden, trying to grow food, and putting hands to dirt have been game changers for me. Our home at the moment isn't a forever home, but it's definitely a home as opposed to somewhere to lay our heads, and although it's still pretty strange and foreign to me at times, it's more of an adventure now to try and figure out what it all is.

This past couple of weeks have been one of working on a new god post, a birch post in honour of Frija. We found the wood for it in New Hampshire when we were visiting friends and in spite of having to largely improvise tools or work that bit harder to do certain tasks (like for example, using an axe and hammer instead of a chainsaw to trim it down), it's been very good experience. The biggest concern when doing any kind of carving for a holy object (at least for me), is that your work will not dishonour the deity you're attempting to honour. And it may seem kind of strange to be so detail-oriented for a post that is going to be veiled (I'm also embroidering her a veil because in our cultus, Frija is veiled and we are not to see her face), but again, it's about doing right by the deities you love, regardless of how many times you get 'bit' by your knives, gouges, and chisels. Once she's finished and ceremonially offered to/veiled, her face will not been seen again - except potentially at certain times of the year by members of the cultus. Along the line, I would also like to create a wain for her, but this is an ambitious project.



This time of the year seems perfect for this too, and there is something about this birthing a new statue at the same time as the world is coming back to life that seems particularly apt to me.



Last week/weekend, we celebrated Beltane, both at home and at a marvellous local Pagan festival which was as raucous and as fun as Beltane should be. For me though, the highlight of the weekend was our planting ritual that we had yesterday, and which I'm going to talk a little about because I don't think we do that enough - talk about the 'small' rituals of our lives. We all talk about the big rituals and the big blots we go to and participate in, but it's far rarer that we talk about the day to day honouring of our gods, ancestors and the local landwihts. And for me, that is the 'meat' of Heathenry. It's in the everyday, it's in how you see what you do when you're doing the most mundane of tasks, it's in how you try to make your lives/families/communities hael/more hael through your actions and it's the millions of small actions repeated over time that count far more than the occasional large acts. At least in my opinion, for the first is indicative of a lifestyle and worldview as opposed to a weekend activity choice.

For weeks, we've been preparing for our garden, getting the seeds, learning, and planning how we were going to do it. We'd had our tomatoes and herbs started indoors, and our potatoes planted before the last frost of the year. To say we were excited about the actual planting would be an understatement. But we really wanted to do something to honour the land, the Eorthan Modor, before we touched tool to earth to dig the plot, and so we decided on an adapted version of the Old English Aecerbot charm.

The actual charm is really quite complex, and has Christian overtones, but the idea of burying offerings in each corner of our growing land was one that felt very right to us and so our simplified version involved the blessing of eggs, apples and tobacco (eggs for new life/new starts, apples as an offering to our ancestors - common in our families, and tobacco for the spirits of this land), a blessing of our tools, and burying the offerings before digging the plot.



We began just before sunset, saying prayers of blessing over our offering items and the tools we would use to work the land with, and then processed to each corner where I had pre-dug a hole with a completely different spade than the ones we would continue to use. Adding the items to the hole, I then chanted a section of the 'Erce, Erce, Erce' refrain before we buried each carefully. Once this was complete, we grabbed our tools and began to dig and today we planted seeds.


A little blurry, but you get the idea!



We're hoping for potatoes, beans, carrots, squash, pumpkin, scallions, tomatoes and herbs. We're hoping to put good, hael food on our table instead of the crap that is sold at the store, what's more, we're hoping for yet another fulfilling tradition we can pass on to any children we have.

Potatoes

Happy Spring!