The amber-colored cloud has fallen.

So, it appears that I have been in a bit of an amber-colored cloud. A two-year-long amber-colored cloud. It began right before I started my initiation work with Freya, and lasted until….well, this evening, when she decided that my boyfriend was “not good enough for me,” and proceeded to tell him all of the reasons why. *headdesk*

Now, I have  loved Freya pretty much since I found out She existed, yes, but the really heavy NRE did not hit in until my initiation. I have been happily riding high on it for a while now. I didn’t notice it so much earlier because how could anyone not love Freya? Everyone loves Freya! She is wonderful! And for the most part, everyone does love Freya–Gods and humans and jotuns alike. She’s just so lovable–goddess of beauty, love, sex, gold, etc., and all. I’ve come across a very few people who were scared (or at least, very wary) of Her, but never anyone that didn’t actually like Her. And I’ve also rarely gotten an ill response from her towards most people. But my boyfriend? She is not a fan. Ironic, because everyone else seems to like him, and She’s the one who threw us together and has been cheerleading at us from the sidelines.

Ninety Days of Odin

And so my lease has finally come due. Twenty years after my first *cough*it was twenty years ago, what oath?*cough* offer I made to Odin, he’s finally cashing in. I know this for various reasons, not the least of which being the pole-dancing Loki visit I had a month or so ago. So I Freya-d up an poured the old man a shot, lit Him a candle, and offered myself into his teaching for the next however long while. And at the end of our first discourse, He said that He wanted me to instigate and complete a “90 Days of Odin” event. “Ninety?” was my question. “Most Gods get a month. Thirty days.” “For you,” He said, “since you took so long… Ninety. Go.” Me: *sputter* But it’s summer! Green, growing things, warm sunny days, fun… Him: eyebrow. Me: *grumblegrumble* Fine.

Ninety days it is, folks. From now until Oct 3. I’m not going to post it all here. But if you haven’t seen anything about him in a while, poke me. Ya’ll get to help keep me on track.

I’ll start off with one of my favorite depictions of Odin–the Fabi-Odin. To this day, it still wigs out my good friend River. To each, their own.

Strengthening Spiritual Communication, by Dagulf Loptson

Killer introductory article by Dagulf Loptson about starting and deepening your relationships with your various spirit entities: Gods, ancestors, and landvaettir (land spirits) alike. The TL:DR version: Treat your Gods and spirits the way you would treat your good friends. Visit them or talk to them on a regular basis; be courteous and respectful in your dealings with them; give them gifts; and honor any vows or oaths you made to them. It’s simple in theory, but not always easy in practice.

http://polytheist.com/orgrandr-lokean/2015/06/18/strengthening-spiritual-communication/

Encountering Outside Powers

Yep.

EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir

I had a great conversation recently with a former student of mine. We were talking about the challenges of balancing human ethics with spirit etiquette. How do we avoid cultural appropriation when a Power from a culture to which we have no other connection decides to drop in and say “Hi” for whatever reason?

Novice spirit workers who have only public blogs from other spirit workers, devotional polytheists, and reconstructionist pagans to work from can come away with an impression that it’s just not supposed to happen in the first place. As if we’re each only ever talking to the specific Powers we have some kind of cultural permission to serve, and that anything else is Against The Rules somehow, and you can either accept those rules or reject them outright and face dire consequences. But in my experience both in private conversations with other spirit workers, and in my…

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And a God descended

So a few days ago, my lady said this: “The time of birth/Berkana is coming. What was hidden under the ground* will come forth. Be prepared. Love, Freya”.

Out in the Bay Area, there’s a phrase we often say: “Suddenly Odin”. It’s shorthand for “some poor sod just got gobsmacked by Odin and we need to rush in an help the newb get their sanity back and give them some groundrules for dealing with the Old Man”. (At least, that’s my interpretation of it.) From what I’ve seen, Odin has a habit of landing in people’s lives in a dramatic way and breaking open their heads.

Well, tonight was “Suddenly Freyr”. I had no idea he could be so sneaky, but I guess my days of living without him are over. Suddenly Odin = head cracked open. Suddenly Freyr = heart cracked open, like in a major way. Likely other things will be cracking but it’s too soon to tell. But it’s not like Freyr hasn’t been hanging around, leering. (Well, I’ve seen it as leering, mainly because I’m not real comfortable with male gods getting all up in my personal space.) The sky Gods in my life–Zeus and Odin, and to a lesser extent, Hermes–do it too, but I’m more comfortable with them. They’re, well, off in the sky more often than not, and more detached and in the realm of the mind. Freyr… well, he’s like my Lady (being her twin brother and all). He’s RIGHT HERE, up close and personal.

RIGHT. HERE.

And this had to happen right before PantheaCon, which will have been–this year in particular, for a variety of reasons–a heart-wrenching experience in any event. Well, at least now I can go into it with Freyr at my back. And yet I feel oddly comforted that he’ll be there. This will be fascinating.

At least my goddess can’t say that She didn’t warn me.

*Freyr goes “into the mound” during the winter, and we just passed the first holiday of Spring, Imbolc. The Vanir are much more in tune with the seasonal/Wiccan calendar than I am, apparently.

Letter to a New Spirit Worker

Tough love for a tough path, and becoming more true for me the further along this road I get.

The Road, the Walker, and What Comes Next

Dear you,

I can’t imagine what you are experiencing right now because your growth process is unlike any others. This is the first and greatest and perhaps most difficult lesson of all: You walk this path alone. You will have allies and companions and perhaps even friends along the way who will offer support and care but you will always ultimately be alone. This truth is difficult to manage but becoming comfortable with solitude will give you the mental space required to puzzle out the challenges that come ahead. Your longing for teachers and mentors is not just a desire for guidance or meaning or even instruction; it is a desire for validation and empirical support as well as the comfort of someone pointing out what you have done well and what you need to improve on. This will not happen. Whatever teachers and mentors this path makes available to…

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Mission Statement (Gently Used)

Yep 🙂 I’m so glad that polytheism is really delving into creating/finding its theology. Finally! This was what I had hoped to get (but never got) from Greater Pagandom twenty years ago as a newbie pagan.

Drinking From the Cup of Life

While reading the discussion prompted by Morpheus’s post on Theurgic Binding, I found this post by John Beckett.

In that post, Beckett says:

I want everyone to know Paganism exists, and I want them to know what it is and what it isn’t. I want those who feel the call to this path to be able to find it in minutes, not years. I want those who have started on this path to learn the difference between crap and not-crap.

I want those who are well down this path to know that deeper experiences are possible. I want those who have had those deeper experiences to know they’re not alone and they’re not delusional.

Beyond that, we’re debating the future of Pagan religion here and now. Our version of the Council of Nicaea is taking place every day on blogs, websites, and social media. I want to be a…

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Things I’d rather do than pack

Let me vent here a bit about moving. Moving is talking up a lot of my time, energy, and bandwidth. It’s also making me fit experiences, events, and conversations into an even shorter timeframe than before–which honestly is a feat in of itself, as I was scheduled down to the hour at some points over the last year. And I have a lot of spiritual and religious things I’d like to be posting about and processing through. So, here’s a list of blogging things I’d rather be doing instead of packing:

–talking about polytheism and the new polytheist.com (Polytheist.com: Honoring Many Gods) website (if you haven’t been, I highly recommend it). Because polytheism is a happening thing right now, and, well, talking about the Gods as actual entities and not archetypes or conglomerations of deities! That can only be a good thing, IMHO.

–Writing, finding, and posting more poetry, music, and art about Freya and her kin

–continuing Galina Krasskova’s Devotional Polytheist Meme. It’s been three or four months, and I’m only up to question #3. I can guarantee you, this was not the plan.

–working more with my Gods, and then talking about it. Right now a lot of them are the equivalent of On Hold. Some more patiently than others.

–Writing my daily Love Notes. Also, been kind of hit or miss recently.

A lot of this stuff has been put on hold as I tie up loose ends in my relationship building and connections-making between the various groups, people, and Gods I’ve been working with this past year. Which is quite a few of loose ends, especially as this move is kind of sudden, and I do a lot of my version of interfaith work in person, one-to-one. (Ironic because I’m an introvert and would rather be at home veging, but it seems that this is the method which works best. And it’s more rewarding when I do it in person.) So… my calendar is more full than it had been, and this right after I did a big paring down of my activities. So much for that.

Sigh. Well, at least once i move I should have a lot of time to catch up on reading, devotional work, and blogging. And boy howdy, am I looking forward to it. Somebody please remind me of that when it’s the middle of winter when it’s 10 below out and I’m stuck in the Midwest far from all of my NorCal communities.

 

 

“Talking” with the Gods

A quick note to clarify what I mean when I say I’ve “talked” with the Gods…

Cutbacks

So, the overwhelming busy-ness has finally caught up with me and I’ve cried “uncle!”. I’ve cut down –temporarily, in some cases– on a lot of the things that I had been helping to lead/organize/manage. This won’t actually affect this blog too much, though, as it’s one of the things I’m keeping. The only real change I’ll make here is that I’m going to worry less about making it an all-Heathen resource, and instead just focus on the Love Notes and Freya-related topics. Likely no one will notice any change at all 🙂 Except perhaps less whining about how busy I am.