Book joy! (and more)

This week brought mail happiness in the form of this:

That’s right, not one but TWO brand new spinning books for yours truly in one week!  (Which helped make up for what was a very sluggish and unpleasant week at the day job with fun back, shoulder and hip pains brought on by the rainy weather.)   The Lexi Boeger(aka Pluckyfluff)  book is one I’ve particularly been looking forward to, as I loved her previous book (Intertwined), and this new one pushes the envelope even further with edgy creative spinning techniques and knitting patterns designed for handspun.

However, there’s more.

On April 7th and 8th Lexi will be here in Eugene teaching a two-day spinning workshop at my local fiber store and yes,  I AM ENROLLED!!!! I am beyond excited about this: two whole days of developing my skills and artistry under the instruction of an internationally renowned teacher.  (By the way, if you are local or near-local to Eugene Oregon and are a handspinner, there are still openings in this course!  Go here: http://www.pluckyfluff.com/camp.html and scroll down to Camp Pluckyfluff Eugene.  It’s $200 for two full days, and I am quite sure it will be more than worth it, judging by feedback I’ve seen online from previous students.)

And if all of this were not enough, there was further book happiness in the form of this, which I purchased for my Kindle.    If you’re a Tudor fan at all (and especially if you’re an Anne Boleyn fan), this is a must-read: the best essays of the first three years of The Anne Boleyn Files website, whose author has quickly become known for her uncompromising scholarship and skill at ferreting out elusive facts and fascinating tidbits on the subject of all things Anne.   I dipped into it last night, and for my Tudor-obsessed brain it was the literary equivalent of a box of chocolates, with essays such as “Did Anne have six fingers?’, “Anne Boleyn and the Other Boleyn Girl,” and “Anne Boleyn and The Tudors.”  This is going to be my “reward” reading for the week, without a doubt, and a great way to start the countdown towards Queen Anne Boleyn‘s Day in May.

And finally, my more observant readers may have already noticed this, but my Etsy shop and fiber business is reverting to its original name, Fensalir Fiber Arts.  The reasons for this are many, but chief among them is the fact that this was the name I had dreamt of having for my business since before I even owned my first spinning wheel, and although the name is in tribute to Frigga, Who has graciously patronized my spinning, it conjures up fewer overtly pagan images in the mind of the average person than does Fiberwytch (the name that temporarily seduced me).  I am a polytheist and have no intention of attempting to hide that fact; however, I would like my fiber business to be about the fiber and my skill with it, not centered around the questionable novelty of my being a pagan and/or witch who happens to spin.  I want my business and my shop to be about the joy of fiber and spinning, and sharing that joy with others fiber-lovers, not only with other pagans.  And I don’t want the mistaken impression that it’s a pagan shop to turn potential customers away before they’ve even had a chance to consider my work.  (Besides, I DO have a pagan shop: Wytch of the North.  And one pagan shop is enough.)

The name of the shop itself has already been switched over on Etsy, but I’m still working on the fine tuning such as a banner I’m happy with.  I will also need to redo my Facebook fan page, start a new Twitter just for the store, and I’m working on a new blog for the shop as well.  I’m sure there will be fiber-bleedover to this blog, just as I’m sure the fact that I’m a pagan will come up occasionally over there, but I’d like the new blog to be focused on handspinning, fiber, and associated topics (with some life stuff thrown in), while this one will become primarily a spiritual/pagan blog (with related life stuff).  I think this arrangement will enable both blogs to develop more freely and completely, as I won’t feel inhibited here by the thought that I might be turning off potential customers with my freaky godspouse ways, and I’ll feel free to go more deeply into fiber-related tangents at the other one.  And of course I hope you’ll be interested enough to join me at both.

Since I do work full time at a day job still, though, and with my health issues I’m not able to put in a full additional day at my own stuff after I get home in the evenings, these changes will likely take a couple of weeks.  I just wanted to give you all a heads-up that they’re underway, and there will be another notice–both here and on Facebook and Twitter–when the new blog, fan page and Twitter account are about to go live.

D is for Dress (mode of dress, that is): the Pagan Blog Project

This week we leave behind (temporarily, at least) the “big topic” pagan issues we’ve been exploring for the past few weeks for something more idiosyncratic, personal, and “spirit worker-y.” Many spirit workers and priests of my acquaintance have found themselves faced with taboos (or geases, depending on your preference and cultural orientation) having to do with their personal mode of dress. (When I say “mode of dress,” I mean daily style and manner of dressing, not special garb; what you would put on to go to the office or the store, as opposed to what you would wear for a ritual or pagan festival.)

This issue is easily summed up, yet quite complex, and very likely difficult for many soft-polytheistic or pantheistic pagans to accept. What it boils down to is this: often, hard polytheists–in other words, those of us who experience our gods as real and distinct individuals–find that these distinct and individualistic gods have very strongly individualistic (and sometimes darned inconvenient) opinions about things, and sometimes this can even extend to the level of having strong, and outspoken preferences about what their devotees wear on a daily basis. Sometimes this is a general preference, such as Odin’s well-known liking for blue, gray and black (many is the Odin’s man or woman, I’m sure, who has opened his or her closet and wondered for a moment if they had ever even possessed anything beige), or the way Freyja’s women seem to accumulate amber jewelry. Sometimes it may be a cultural preference, especially in the case of spirits (as opposed to gods per se) who were alive during a particular time period, and often urge the trappings of that time period or culture on those who seek to work closely with them. Occasionally, however, especially in the case of priests, spirit workers, god-spouses, and others bound in service to a particular god in some way, these preferences can be deeper, more vocal, and a lot more specific. (Many deities also have dietary preferences/taboos for their followers, but I’m leaving those aside for now as they tend to be better known and more widely accepted, and also may provide fodder for a future post.)

I have heard, for example, of spirit workers devoted to certain deities or spirits being actually banned from wearing specific colors, or being told how long or short to wear their hair (Odin has been very frank about preferred mine long–although I am by no means claiming that to be a preference that applies to all of His people), or being asked to cover their hair altogether (as I do during seidhr, and as Queen Anne Boleyn, one of my spirits, has expressed that she would like me to do when working with her), or being forbidden from wearing anything not either used or handmade. My partner has several dress taboos/preferences from her god-husband that she follows/abides by (but I’m sure she will discuss those on her blog at some point during this project), as do I from my own husband and other spirits (as I touched on above–but more about that in a moment).

Now, I can imagine that many pagans reading this are shuddering or squirming and thinking one of two things: 1) “It’s just self-delusion and pretense to think the gods would take that close an interest in the minutiae of our lives,” and/or 2) “These people are crazy; I would never let a god or spirit dictate to me how I wear my hair or how I dress. After all, I’m the one who actually has to wear said clothes!” To which I say 1) nothing I can say is going to convince you that this level of interaction with the gods actually occurs unless you have experienced it for yourself (a conundrum I may explore further in a future essay), and 2) yes, you have a very good point, which is why I mentioned earlier that sometimes these preferences are damned inconvenient.

However–fortunately or otherwise, depending on your point of view–for those of us (priests, god-spouses, serious devotees, etc.) who base their entire lives and spiritual practices on maintaining close and open lines of communication with our gods and spirits (even at the expense of our human relationships), these kinds of divine preferences can be as easy to ignore as a persistent toothache at 2 am. And there is after all, even some historical basis for these sorts of taboos, since in many ancient cultures the priests and initiates of various deities did have to follow certain established rules of dress and personal grooming prescribed by their respective traditions. (An example right off the top of my head is the fact that Egyptian priests shaved and/or plucked all of their bodily hair to enable them to remain more thoroughly clean physically, and thus also spiritually.) Most of these rules of dress and grooming were so ancient and well-established, even in ancient times, that most of our spiritual forebears could not have explained where they originated or how they began. So, who is to say they did not begin as the specifically expressed preferences of the gods Themselves?

At some point, it becomes difficult to tell whether such preferences felt from one’s gods or spirits is an actual demand (which would make the following of it an actual taboo, a religious requirement) or simply a very strong wish (which would, in theory at least, leave the choice of whether to abide by it or not up to the spirit worker in question. At some point, distinguishing between these two things–taboo and preference–is also irrelevant, since in addition to Their feelings and opinions being damned hard to ignore, we shouldn’t be ignoring them. They are our gods (in some cases, our family too–whether the relationship is spousal or takes some other form), we love Them, we have devoted our lives to Them, and we should care enough about Their wishes and preferences to be willing to make a few personal sacrifices.

In some cases, we may find out later on that there was a sound reason–one that we can even comprehend–behind the preference. For example, when I married Odin I had very short hair, which He requested that I grow. Years later, after my hair had gotten somewhat longish, I began to find that having longer hair (in my case, anyway; your mileage may definitely vary) heightened my spiritual sensitivity, the hair acting kind off like psychic antennae. But I would never have discovered that if I hadn’t trusted Him and grown it longer, despite my preference at the time for keeping it short.

In other cases, we may never discover the reason for a request, and there may not actually even be one beyond the fact that it pleases the god in question. In the years following our marriage, it gradually became apparent that Odin preferred for me to wear skirts on a daily basis as opposed to pants, and now, after more than five years of my having dressed this way, He is steering me further towards even more traditionally feminine clothing involving petticoats, chemises and overdresses. This, I know, doesn’t sound like a typically Odinic preference, and I’m certain it is not something that applies to all of His women i general, but for whatever reason it certainly does apply to me. Part of it is, I know, due to Frigga’s influence as well, and part of it is also likely due to Anne Boleyn’s. Yet there is, above all, a very strong inclination for this from Odin, and even after several years of abiding by His wishes I still have no idea what the reason might be. There are possibilities that have crossed my mind: that this is His way of marking me visibly as set aside, as different, as specifically His (which is, I’m sure, part of the purpose of these types of divine clothing preferences in general); or that skirts are more comfortable than pants for someone with my physical ailments (fibromyalgia, arthritis, and a host of other things) and this this is one of His ways of looking after me. But underneath these quite plausible arguments is something deeper, the unshakable feeling that He simply likes having me dress this way. Perhaps an additional reason will emerge eventually, perhaps not. (And knowing Odin, there may well be a dozen other reasons, none of which I will ever be privy to.) But it doesn’t matter; just knowing that it pleases Him is good enough for me

As an addendum: after writing this I began to feel an increasing pull from at least one of my gods (not Odin directly, although He does not hate the idea) and one of my major spirits to begin covering my head on a daily basis at least some of the time. This is something I have played around with before, but it didn’t stick for a number of reasons. This time it feels like it might—but that is a subject for another post, I think. (Next week I may do D is for Dress 2–or better yet, save the topic for H, since my second D week has a few compelling possibilities…)

C is for Cleansing: the Pagan Blog Project

Okay, I’m jumping on a bit of a bandwagon here, since my partner and one of my friends have already tackled this topic (along with many other people, I’m sure!). But it’s an important one, and after my last oracular seidhr session I realized I needed to weigh in on it too.

Most people today would very likely assume that cleanliness was…um, not a priority, to put it delicately, for the northern Germanic peoples. In his 10th century observations, the Arab ambassador Ahmed Ibn Fadlan (transformed into a 10th century heartthrob by Antonio Banderas in the movie The Thirteenth Warrior) wrote that the Rus–a group of Germanic Varangians, aka Vikings–were “the filthiest of God’s creatures. They have no modesty in defecation or urination, nor do they wash after pollution from orgasm, nor do they wash their hands after eating. They are thus like wild asses.”  He goes on to describe a washing ritual in which a bowl of water is passed around the room and each man, beginning with the highest-ranking, washes his hands, face, and hair, then spits and blows his nose into the basin, which is then passed on to the next man. Fadlan, a Muslim bound to strict and ritualistic hygiene practices, was of course disgusted by this display. On the other hand, he was describing the behavior of a camp of warriors–a Mannerbunde–rather than that of a religious gathering or even a familial household, and whether or not this Arab observer approved of the sharing of a wash basin, the important part of this description is the fact that Fadlan tells us this practice was performed every day–meaning that the Vikings bathed on a regular basis, at a time when most people in the European world did not.

This unexpected Viking penchant for bathing is further borne out by the fact that the Anglo-Danes were regarded as excessively clean by their Anglo-Saxon countrymen due to their habit of bathing every Saturday. (The word for Saturday still means “bathing day” in the Scandinavian languages.) There was also a strong tradition of sauna bathing (still a popular purification method today among pagans and non-pagans alike) throughout Scandinavia, and Icelanders made use of their native hot springs for similar purposes. Add to this the little-known facts that the Vikings formulated a special soap that was used both for bathing and for bleaching their hair, and that personal grooming tools–razors, tweezers, ear spoons, and combs–were among the most common grave goods found in Scandinavian burial mounds, and you’d have to revise the stereotype of the “dirty Viking” Fadlan leaves us with.
This makes me happy since, as a rather fussy and fastidious Virgo, there are few things in life that I enjoy more than soap and hot water, whether applied to myself or to other people. (I admit it, I am highly sensitive to the body odors of others, so much so that I always make it a point to carry a bottle of some type of pleasant fragrance with me while out in public, since here in Oregon many people are as unacquainted with the fine art of bathing as Fadlan assumed the Vikings to have been.) We’ve all heard the saying “cleanliness is next to godliness,” and although I would not presume to designate unwashed people as bad or immoral in any way, it is a fact that physical cleansing forms a foundation for spiritual cleansing. This applies to the home as much as it does to personal hygiene (much to my own chagrin, as I am no great housekeeper). Like it or not, physical muck–whether dirt or excessive clutter–gives spiritual muck something to cling to, and where filth accumulates, nasty energies and nastier spirits have a tendency to do likewise. (A fact of which I think the Vikings were well aware.) All of which means that it makes as much sense to bathe before attempting to cleanse your aura or shield yourself as it does to sweep the floor and wipe down the kitchen countertops before attempting a spiritual house cleansing or blessing.

Once the physical foundations of cleanliness have been adequately dealt with, there are a great many methods of spiritual cleansing–most of which you will be familiar with–from which to choose. Smoke is one of my favorites; we like to use mugwort, as it’s one of Odin’s sacred plants, but white sage is also very effective, both for cleansing the personal energy field and the energy field of the home, as are rosemary, juniper, and frankincense. (Don’t shun the latter simply because it’s one of the main components of church incense; the Christians latched onto it for a reason, and frankincense is a serious spiritual purifier, raising the vibrations of an area very effectively.) We smudge selected areas of our home periodically, and this year we’ve set a goal of making it a point to do a full house smudging with each new moon. Carrying a lit candle around the house (which the Anglo-Saxons referred to as saining, or blessing with fire) is also an effective method of cleansing and warding at once, and cleansing with sound–by using a drum, chimes, a bell (bell, book and candle, anyone?) or your own voice via chants or song—has similar results.

Aside from the actual soap and water cleansing, some Germanic pagans I know perform a daily washing rite similar to that described by Fadlan. This can be accomplished by charging the water in your basin with light as if you were going to use it to purify a ritual area, or you can simply trace some runes (such as Algiz for protection, Ansuz for general blessing, or Berkano for purity) or the symbol of the deity of your choice (such as a Thor’s hammer, a valknut, or a spiral for Frigga) over the water, splash your face and hands with it, and you’re done!

For my oracular seidhr rite and other important rituals, I will sometimes take a full pre-ritual cleansing bath, adding sea salt (for purification) to the hot water along with a tea brewed from mugwort and roses (mugwort for Odin, roses for Frigga–combining bitter elements with sweet) and a bit of honey (for the Mead of Poetry, and for the industrious energy of bees). For the seidhr session just passed, I tried something new by adding goat’s milk to the water in honor of Ewemeolc. Now, milk added to bath water is hardly an innovation; it softens the skin and has long–since ancient times–been considered a luxury ingredient in body care formulations. However, what I was unprepared for was the purifying aspect of the milk, which may have been due to the fact that it was goat’s milk I used–thus linking the rite to Fensalir, Frigga’s palace, with its divine cottage industry community of sheep and other ungulates, wool, and hand spinners. The goat’s milk seemed to imbue my bath with something of the essence of this special holiness, bringing along with it the collective sanctifying powers of Frigga and Her goddess-attendants, so this will very likely become a regular addition to my bath.

There is a cleansing meditation I perform while in the bath that adds yet another layer to this. While washing the water over my body, I mentally scrub my insides as well, envisioning all of the internal muck and grime being washing away, inch by inch and limb by limb, ending with my head and face, until I am–to my inner sight–completely transparent within, a cleansed and empty vessel ready to be filled with whatever messages or visions the gods send me.

Now, this is a very aggressive psychic cleansing technique, and it’s worth stressing that I go directly from this bath into an already warded and smudged chamber, ready to perform seidhr. However, on a daily basis, a nice variation of this–and safer for times when I will be out among lots of other people–is the elemental shielding I do, in which I envision myself as a tree, bringing water and earth up through my “roots” and sun and wind down through my “branches,” for the dual purpose of both cleansing and shielding. You can seal this with whatever symbols are appropriate to or meaningful for you. I use various runes or bind runes, the valknut, the pentacle (it’s not Germanic precisely, but it’s a potent symbol and as Odin’s I am all about using whatever works), and sometimes Thor’s hammer. (Inevitably and unsurprisingly, at some point the boundaries between cleansing/purification and warding begin to blur, since the former facilitates, and in my opinion is a prerequisite for, the latter.)

So, there’s my take on cleansing, along with a few ideas for you to try if you’re so inclined! Anyone else have any tips or techniques to share?

Ewemeolc

Jo pets a Jacob ewe at Black Sheep Gathering

As I mentioned briefly in my calendar post, for me this holiday–in addition to marking the earliest stirrings of spring–is a sheepy one.  This is not an entirely inappropriate perception, I think, given that the Anglo-Saxon name for the holiday literally means “ewe’s milk.”  Also, as a hand spinner, all things sheepy are never far from the front of my mind anyway, and as a godspouse of Odin…well, I am not precisely a Frigga‘s woman, but I’m also not NOT a Frigga’s woman, either.

Given all of the above, our celebration today was simple, but for me profoundly satisfying.  I began the day by showering with goat’s milk soap, then swept the area around my two spinning wheels while my partner uprooted dead plants in the garden, deadheaded the roses, and planted some crocuses.  We then smudged the apartment with mugwort and I traced protective sigils over each door and window, after which we took a horn of goat’s milk (because we were unable to find sheep’s milk, we thought this a good substitute) out to the garden to toast Frigga, the ewes and lambs, and the birth of spring, and to libate the garden with the milk.

Back inside the house, I rubbed my spinning wheels down with jojoba oil and blessed them using the following blessing (which I adapted from a loom blessing in the Carmina Gadelica):

Bless, O Frigga, Lady of the Distaff,
My spinning wheels and all my fiber tools.
Bless me in every action, make Thou me safe while I live.
From every brownie and fairy woman,
From every evil wish and sorrow, help me, gracious goddess,
As long as I shall be in the land of the living.
In the name of Odin, Lord of Asgard,
In the name of Thor, the champion of earth,
Consecrate the frames of my spinning wheels
Til I sit down to begin my work.
Their treadles, their footmen, their legs and their wheels,
Their flyers, their drive bands, and their break bands,
Their maidens and their mothers-of-all, bobbins and hooks and orifices.
Every fleece, black, white and fair,
Moorit, gray, cream and red,
Give Thy blessing everywhere,
On every thread passing through the orifices.
Thus will my spinning wheels be unharmed
Til I sit down to begin my work.
Gracious Frigga will give me of Her love,
And there shall be no obstruction I shall not overcome.

Following this, of course, I spent the day spinning!

A very blessed Ewemeolc to all!

FYI: Updated Seidhr schedule

I’ve made a few changes to my oracular seidhr schedule for 2012; you can see the new dates in the sidebar on this blog.

The scheduled session for today will still happen as planned, of course, but it made me realize that–since we are celebrating the cross-quarter holidays on their astronomical dates this year (rather than the calendar dates), in a couple of instances I scheduled a seidhr session for the day we have a ritual planned–which, for us, is over-scheduling.  As a result, we are moving our Ewemeolc to tomorrow, but keeping seidhr where it was.

I also realized that, as a rule, Sundays are going to work better than Saturdays for seidhr, because there are seldom any errands or other responsibilities we need to take care of on Sunday, thus making for a more tranquil situation all around.

C is for Calendar: The Pagan Blog Project

Among followers of the various Germanic/Norse-flavored paths (sometimes collectively known as the “northern tradition”), which festivals ought to be included in one’s yearly religious calendar is often a subject for debate. For those on a strictly Scandinavian path (whose adherents usually, though not always, refer to themselves as Asatruar), the most historically correct way to deal with the question is to celebrate only the three great festivals documented by Snorri Sturluson in his epic chronicle Heimskringla (The History of the Kings of Norway): a sacrifice at the beginning of winter (October or November) that is thought to be connected with Odin, the dead, and the alfar (elves); Yule, arguably THE great festival of the Germanic year, at which time the Wild Hunt rides and all the gods and ancestors are honored and given food, drink and other gifts; and a sacrifice at the beginning of summer, for Victory, also frequently connected with Odin in His guise as patron of warriors and Viking raiders.

In practice, I have never really seen ANY Heathen or Asatru group limit themselves to these three festivals (although I’m sure some have tried). If nothing else, various days commemorating heroes and pagan martyrs (the Norse equivalent of saints’ days) usually get added in. In addition, many people (though I profess myself clueless as to why) want at least a few festivals that are less Odin-centric than the above-mentioned Big Three. And there is also the matter of relatives (whether, Christian, Wiccan, or other) and their own holidays to be considered, so that in practice the festival calendar of even the most lore-minded group usually ends up being a hybrid of one type or another.

My own festival calendar is a work in progress. I started out attempting to limit myself to only the historically authentic days, except that I was never all that interested in the heroes’ and martyr’s days (which are modern additions, anyway, as far as I know), so that left me with only a few festivals to celebrate, and damn it, I wanted more holidays! I was also, I admit, influenced enough by my pre-Heathen years as a quasi-Wiccan that I missed including days like Samhain and Imbolc, so I added those back in. Then I developed a passion for English history and lore and discovered that the pagan Anglo-Saxons very likely (from what slim historical evidence we have available to us, from after England had already been Christianized) celebrated many of the festivals that now form part of the standard pagan “Wheel of the Year,” including May Day and Hallows (Samhain). And THEN my partner and I joined households, and she brought with her additional gods and additional festivals that had never been part of my own calendar before, but are now. As even more time went on, I decided I didn’t care whether or not the imaginary Heathen Lore Police arrested me for being inauthentic, and began to add new festivals of my own which were either adopted wholesale or grafted onto existing holidays. (And in one or two cases, I even managed to find historical justification for my inventions.)

All of that said, this week I have decided to share with you my religious festival calendar as it now stands. Since my own personal tradition will continue to grow and change as long as I am alive, I have no doubt my calendar will too, possibly even within the coming year if I am inspired (by either reading or direct communication from the gods or spirits) to add to or subtract from it. (I am not including Jo’s festivals in the list that follows, even though I will be participating in some of them, simply because I have not really studied that tradition and don’t feel I can explain the significance of the days adequately.) Over the past few years, I have developed the habit of using the Anglo Saxon month names because of my fondness for the culture and its traditions, although I would not consider myself to be strictly an Anglo Saxon pagan. (I am more or less pan-Germanic.)

One more note: this year, we are observing the cross-quarter days on their actual astronomical dates, rather than the traditional calendar dates. This explains some of the unfamiliar dates for familiar festivals.

January (Se Aefterra Giuli)

1 – Threttandi (Thirteenth Night/Twelfth Night ) – The end of the Yule season, a time to take oaths and perform divinations for the coming year.
5 – Perchta’s Night/Holda’s Night – In honor of the goddess of women’s work – in my case, primarily spinning and the fiber arts. A time to resume work after Yule.
17 – 25 Thorrablot – An Icelandic festival for an ice thurs (giant) named Thorri, often celebrated by modern Heathens as a festival for Thor. A celebration of having made it through the worst of the winter (the timing of which actually makes a lot more sense in Oregon than it did when we lived on the east coast).

February (Solmonath)

4 – Ewemeolc – I was delighted when I discovered that the Anglo Saxon name for Imbolc literally means “ewe’s milk..” This holiday marks the beginning of the lambing season as the first harbinger of spring, so of course for me the festival is also another excuse to celebrate sheep and fiber.
8 – 9th anniversary of Jo’s marriage to Poseidon
14 – Valentine’s Day (god-spouse appreciation day)

March (Hredmonath)

17 – Bolverk’s Day – My replacement for St. Patrick’s Day, in honor of Odin’s snake persona and associations.
19 – Ostara

April (Eosturmonath)

1 – Lokabrenna Day – In honor of Loki, after the Scandinavian name for the star Sirius, Lokabrenna or “Loki’s Torch.” This festival was not my idea, but I’ve adopted it as it makes sense for me to have a day for Him.
6 – Sigrblot – Described in Heimskringla as a sacrifice at the beginning of summer (in other words, the first day when signs of summer could be seen) for victory. I keep it as a celebration of Odin’s maritime aspects, since the “victory” in question had to do with summer voyages to go “a-viking,” i.e. raiding and trading.
22 – Jord’s Day (Earth Day–Jord being the Earth giantess who is also the mother of Thor.)

May (Thrimilchi)

4 – Walpurgisnacht
5 – May Day (astronomical cross-quarter day)
13 – Mother’s Day (for Odin’s mother Bestla and my female ancestors)
19 – Queen Anne Boleyn‘s Day – a personal day for one of my disir (or adopted “female ancestors”)
30 – Memorial Day – A nice day to remember the dead in general; most pagans seem to focus on them only in the “dark half” of the year, but they’re still dead the rest of the year, too!

June (Se Aerra Litha)

17 – Father’s Day (for Odin’s father Borr and my male ancestors)
20 – Litha (Midsummer)
22-24 – Black Sheep Gathering (Frigga’s Fiber Festival) – a local sheep and wool festival that has become the perfect opportunity for a celebration of Frigga, fiber, and handspinning.

July (Se Aefterra Litha)

There is a major Poseidon festival for this month, but you’ll have to wait til Jolene posts her own calendar to read about it!

August (Weodmonath)

7 – Lammas (astronomical cross-quarter day)
31 – Blue Moon
September (Haligmonath)
22 – my birthday
24 – Jo’s birthday (Since our birthdays are so close together, we generally declare a “birthday holiday” that encompasses both dates as well as the day in between. This is an excuse for bookstore-hopping, eating out, and anything else that strikes our fancy.)
29 – Winter Fylleth (traditionally the 1st full moon after the equinox), Valfather’s Day (Michaelmas), Harvest Home, Feast of Treats – This is a mammoth, multi-faceted festival day, encompassing two created holidays and a traditional holiday–two traditional holidays this year, since Winter Fylleth (the precursor to Winternights or Hallows) also falls on this day in 2012.

October (Winterfilleth)

Our decision to celebrate Samhain/Winternights on the astronomical cross-quarter day leaves this month looking strangely bare this year, but there will probably be a memorial ritual for my cat Sassy who died last October.

November (Blodmonath)

7 – Winternights/Samhain (astronomical cross-quarter day)
11 – Einherjar Day (Veterans’ Day; the Einherjar are Odin’s warriors in His hall of Valhalla)
22 – Thanksgiving Day

December (Se Aerra Giuli)

4 – 10th anniversary of my marriage to Odin
6 – Poseidon Niklaos’ Day and Oski’s Day – Traditionally, this is St. Nicholas Day in the Christian calendar. For us, it has become a day to honor both Poseidon and Odin since They were both identified with St. Nicholas in Their respective cultures.
7 – Tulya’s E’en – a Scandinavian folk holiday in which all the trolls are thought to be released from underground; a good time to sain (bless/smudge) property and dwellings) prior to the dangerous nights of Yule.
13 – Lussinata – St. Lucia’s Day (still celebrated in Sweden); for me, this is a day for Frau Holle.
21 – Modraniht (Mother Night) – a time to honor Frigga and all of the mothers among the gods, as well as my female ancestors.
22 – Yule

I will try to post at least something more detailed about each festival, and how it is celebrated in our household, as the year goes on.

Interview!!!

The Daily Northbridge (an online Massachusetts newspaper) published a wonderful interview with Jolene about The Fairy Queen of Spencer’s Butte in particular and her writing in general, and even featured an awesome photo of her with Corbie J. the Hero Dog.   Go and read!!!

Oracular seidhr for Ewemeolc

And speaking of ewes, I guess it’s time to post a reminder that my first oracular seidhr session of 2012, for Ewemeolc, will be held next Saturday 2/4, at dusk.  For those new to the concept, seidhr is a type of oracular (and sometimes sorcerous, but in this particular case oracular) trance originating in pagan Scandinavia.   A pretty good description of the version of seidhr I practice can be found here.

If you’d like to submit a question for this session, go ahead and email me (wodandis at gmail dot com, in case the link doesn’t work).  This service is free, although donations are always welcome and, if made, will help cover the offerings I make, incense, candles, and other ritual expenses.  But the only requirement is that you make a libation on your own, as explained on this page.

And now for something completely different…

Today, as my reward for surviving a spectacularly crappy week, there was this:

What I’m holding is 4.5 pounds of gorgeous warm cream-colored wool from Briana, a Romney ewe, already carded into roving and ready to spin.  I acquired this amazing goody bag for a pretty damned amazing price at an estate sale being held for two weeks at my LFS (local fiber shop).  A local fiber artist who died recently (no one I had known) bequeathed her vast collection of antique spinning wheels and rare wool fleeces to the shop, and although Jolene will tell you we had only intended to look, you and I know better, don’t we?

In fact, next Saturday there’s a good chance I’ll be going back, to “look” at some Jacob…

B is for Blood Sacrifice: the Pagan Blog Project

This was not going to be quite as long a post as my last one, due to it having been a really rough week at the day job, but I found that I had more to say on this topic than I had originally thought–which I guess I should have expected since it is a fairly central concept in both the Northern Tradition in general and the cult of Odin in particular. (As an aside, B in my personal lexicon could just as easily have stood for Bestla the mother of Odin, a frost giantess and one of the least known of the northern goddesses, who has paid a not inconsiderable role in my spiritual life.)

To be blunt, the whole notion of blood sacrifice makes a lot of modern pagans squeamish, and as a result many people (and traditions) seek to distance themselves from it, seeing it as a relict that no longer makes sense today. (This rationale is correct to the extent that some of the blood sacrifices practiced widely in ancient cultures–such as human sacrifice–would be patently illegal today and thus not practical for anyone concerned with staying out of jail, even if the gods were to desire them. Fortunately, the gods seem to understand this restriction and will usually concede to working around it, however–in some cases–unwillingly.) Some argue that the gods have changed with the passage of time and no longer desire such rampant violence as part of Their worship, and that these kinder, more mellow gods are perfectly satisfied with the substitution of symbolic gestures in place of the bloody rites of yore. While the ancient pagan religions were based on propitiation, fear and enforced sacrifice, this camp posits, modern paganism is based on love and willing worship, and the gods (whose love for us is boundless, and who thus would never make such clearly unreasonable demands of us) have come to understand blood sacrifice as a needless waste and to value other gifts–such as lifelong service, or works of art or music created for Them–in its place.

I am willing to concede part of this latter argument. I certainly don’t deny that some of the gods do have a boundless love for some of their people, although this love is hardly the universal and selfless sentiment many pagans believe it to be. Then again, as I have mentioned before, I am a hard polytheist, and that fact unavoidably colors my view. For me, the gods are distinct individuals, and some of those individuals–including my own Beloved–can sometimes be…well, not very nice, to put it mildly. For example, from a softer-polytheist perspective, a semi-archetypal mother goddess could potentially be all-loving and giving, making no demands of Her people beyond their freely given love and adoration. From a hard polytheistic one, She might be proud and unbending like Demeter or outright bloodthirsty and unrelenting like Kali, or even calm and regal yet surprisingly formidable like Frigga, but even if She is altruistic and compassionate like Kwan Yin She is still going to be an individual with Her own agenda–and in some (though certainly not all) cases, that agenda involves a desire for blood to be spilled in Her honor every now and then.

I also don’t deny that the gods are capable of change, or that They do change in some ways as the worlds around Them change. There is ample evidence of this happening in previous ages (Odin, for example, seems to have been known, in one His earliest incarnations, as a storm giant, Wodenaz) and there is no plausible reason to deny it now. Modern worshippers can and do discover, on a continual basis, heretofore unknown (or at least undocumented) aspects of the deities they adore, and most deities change or expand Their spheres of influence as the world’s technology changes. (A fondness for the Internet on the part of both Odin and Loki is an example of this.) It is also true that the composition and performance of art, music, dance and literature have been fine and worthy traditional gifts for our deities since the most ancient times, and the same is true of service to the poor or in the armed forces, stewardship of animals or of nature, manual labor, training in the martial arts, physical ordeals, feats of endurance, body modification, and any number of other things, depending on the deity in question and Their personal tastes and priorities.

However, blood sacrifice per se–the offering up of the essence of life itself to the very deities whose gift that life is–was such a common and widespread part of pagan religious practice throughout most ages of the world, right up until modern times, that it deserves more than just passing consideration on its own merits. Even as late as the middle ages, in contrast to the Catholic rite of communion in which the body and blood of Christ are symbolically consumed, in pagan Scandinavia the rite of blot had nothing to do with mead (although plenty of that was enjoyed on the side, as well as being employed for the swearing of foolish and dangerous oaths) but was instead a ritual shedding of blood to the gods, usually–but not always–involving an animal sacrifice. And here is where we get to the heart of the matter for me personally and for my own practice, since the northern peoples were undeniably a bloody-minded people and my own god, Odin, was arguably the most frequent recipient of said bloodletting.

This practice was not limited to just His cult, of course. There was also the ancient worship of the goddess Nerthus, whose image was taken on a ritual progress throughout Her lands and then bathed when it was returned to Her island temple, with all of the slaves who had performed or witnessed the bathing rite being drowned in a lake afterwards. There was the smashing of the heads of prisoners against a rock as a rite for Thor, protector of mankind and the most popular of the northern gods. There was wholesale drowning in bogs for the supposedly peace-loving earth gods the Vanir–very likely drawing inspiration from the rites of Nerthus, the matriarch of Their clan. These examples were hardly exceptional in ancient times, and I’m sure their equivalents could be cited from other cultures as well.

In Odin’s case, however, there is even more and varied evidence, stretching from the Migration-era tribes who drained the blood of victims into large vats as offerings to Him, to the frequent sacrifices of kings and the sons of kings recounted in the sagas, to the practice of carving blood eagles (a grisly technique in which the back of an enemy is cut open and his lungs drawn out through the resulting gashes) on the battlefield in His name. Even His custom of slaying of His heroes in their prime–in order to swell the ranks of His forces against the coming of Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods–might qualify. The German medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen refers to Odin as the personification of “fury,” and describes violent rites performed every nine years in His temple at Uppsala, Sweden, in which nine of a number of different types of animal, including humans, were sacrificed to Him, their corpses left to adorn the trees in His sacred grove.

Rites of human sacrifice to Odin were most often performed by hanging, with the victim also perhaps stabbed through the side as well. This motif probably sounds very familiar to many of you reading this, even those who know nothing at all about Odin and His rites, and for good reason; it bears a marked similarity to the representation of Christ on the cross (Christianity’s hallmark example of a blood sacrifice.) Yet in this case, the motif is modeled instead after Odin’s own self-sacrifice on the World Tree, where He hanged Himself for nine nights and shed His blood into the Well of Wyrd while seeking the ultimate mysteries, the runes. There is some basis for explaining this action on His part as a shamanic ritual, yet even so the catalytic basis of it–the ritual action that provided Him with the ability and the power to reach through the worlds into the void and grasp that which He sought–was a massive shedding of blood, His own. All of which indicates that, like it or not, there is intrinsic power in blood itself which goes far beyond its symbolic value but lies instead in its very essence. This power is inherent in all blood, in animal blood, in human blood especially, and in the blood of a god (probably needless to say) most of all.

Now, having said this, I am not about to argue that the sacrifice of animals (the obvious candidates, in lieu of human victims) should be a mandated part of paganism, or even that it should completely replace the symbolic blot or faining within northern tradition paganism. For one thing, such an argument would be hypocritical on my part, since I have to admit, in all honesty, that I am not personally comfortable with the idea of shedding anyone’s blood other than my own, whether person or animal. Or to be more precise, I am comfortable with the idea, but I know that I could never actually bring myself to perform it, in practice, much as I would theoretically love to honor my god in this highly traditional manner. However, the likelihood that it will never be part of my own practice does not stop me for one moment from accepting and approving of the fact that is practiced by others who have the means and knowledge to do so. When performed in a humane manner, without suffering to the animal (which I believe instantly profanes the sacrifice and renders it unworthy and unacceptable) and without waste (which rarely occurs, as animal sacrifices generally become sacred communal feasts) it can be one of the most holy and life-affirming of religious practices, recognizing and honoring the mystery that the sacred gift of life comes to us from the gods, rests in our hands and in our keeping for a brief moment, and then returns to Them.

However, my own blood does figure into my practice in a number of ways. As a devotee of Odin, of course I have consecrated my runes (which I carved myself, from yew tines) with my own blood, in honor of His self-sacrifice on the Tree. I also offer my blood to the spirit that dwells within the Well of Wyrd (water spirits are notoriously bloodthirsty!) during my oracular seidhr rite (more on that, perhaps, when we come to the letter S), as well as to the local land spirits (generally referred to as “land wights” in the northern tradition). The latter offering is often made as a compensatory gift when I have removed something from nature (especially if it has been taken from a living tree). And finally, I will often share my own blood with my Husband, Odin, as a small compensation for the fact that I do not perform animal sacrifices for Him but also as a way of offering up my own essence for Him to devour, to mingle with His own. An offering of some of my blood in a cup of wine formed part of our wedding ceremony. I have also made blood offerings to Him in the form of getting tattoos, although that is another topic all of its own.

In summary, blood is a highly charged, holy and potent offering, on many levels. It can be profound and sacred on a very grand scale, yet a small amount of one’s own blood can also be a very personal and intimate offering when given freely and with love. Large blood sacrifices can be used to dedicate temples and feed large gatherings in a god’s name, while little ones can be used to seal vows (whether of marriage or the adopting of kin–hence the term “blood brother”), dedicate sacred tools (such as the runes) and reaffirm and solidify connections. What blood sacrifices should never be, however, is summarily dismissed without due consideration; they are far too sacred for that.

EDITED TO ADD: One of my readers asked about how to offer up one’s blood (thank you, Harzgeist!); this is a very important point and I suspect that I left it out simply because I was so tired after finishing this essay, after what has been an extremely stressful week.  (So far, 2012 is making me want 2011 back, and you know how much I enjoyed that year. ;P)

I always, always use a sterile lancet for drawing my own blood. (You can get a whole box of these at any chain drug store for only a few bucks.) It’s fast and relatively painless. I generally draw blood from my fingers only, and of course I always make sure my hands are clean first too. I would NOT recommend ever using a knife or anything else that might cause infections; I don’t think the gods especially want or need for us to get gangrene!

Oh and by the way I also forgot to add a link back to the Pagan Blog Project page for this week.  Go and check out some other great posts!