So, I’m smack-dab in the middle of packing, and watching what I’ve built for the last 2.5 years be slowly deconstructed. I’m very big about having each thing I own go to the right person, someone who needs it and will appreciate it. As I’m dedicated to Freya now, this also means I can’t just give things away like I used to. She expects me to actually get compensated for expensive things, like the lovely brown leather corset with embossed harvest-colored leaves on the front, or my fancy set of original Pavel kettlebells. Moving would go a lot faster if I just gave these things away, but I can see her point, especially as this move is primarily financially motivated.
The long and the short of this is that big sections of my life have already been packed up, given away, or sent off to my parents’ house–including parts of my altars. Their sense of presence and power have been disrupted, and I’m kind of unnerved by it.
However, maybe there is a silver lining. When I was Wiccan, way back in the day, I was always that Wiccan, the one who felt that I needed no wand or pentacle or what have you because those things were just symbols and tools for accessing what I already had inside me. So, why waste the money? Just visualize it. This worked out ok, actually, until the Wiccan love for fancy regalia and my own Taurus tendencies to own things took over. But I always remembered that attitude. That’s at least part of why became Heathen. We don’t need no stinking regalia! Heathenry works just fine without it. (Though, of course, that doesn’t stop me from having fancy regalia. I am a Freyaswoman after all.)
Now, with most of my altars broken and their components scattered or given away, I’m connecting more with the energy that was behind the altars. It’s great that my Freya altar had tons of amber, gold-ish things, hearts, sweet libations, love notes, and jewelry, but the altar can be just as powerful without them. In fact, it is.
I might even say that my altars may have gotten in the way of my connection to the Gods sometimes. Now, I just have the God-shaped energy hanging out in that general area, unattached to any specific item, and I can feel more of what that energy is and what it is doing. My Gods are bigger than my altars! Who knew? They also feel more mature; or, at least the energies that I’m connecting with seem to have a lot more depth and maturity to them than those that hid within my trinkets. (Of course, that could just as easily be because I’m doing a lot of owning up to past behaviors and making serious, grown-up changes in my life. Maybe it’s both. /shrug)
I’m just trying to find the gold beneath the trauma of moving (yet again), of experiencing the trauma of my lovely, hand-picked, highly valuable possessions being passed on (yet again)–to homes that will appreciate them, granted, but still–out of my life, and into the life of another. But as She says, if you want to have newer and better things of all types come into your life, you need to let the old ones go (preferably freely and without resentment). Sigh. Yes, ma’am.