Patreon Poem/Prayer/Song 77: For the Alcohol Spirits

If you want to submit a request for a prayer, poem, or song to be written to you privately or to be posted on this blog or my Patreon for a God, Ancestor, or spirit, sign up for the Ansuz and above level here on my Patreon.

This request was made by Maleck for the Alcohol Spirits.

Hail to the Alcohol Spirits!

Mead, wine, beer, ale

Vodka, whiskey, absinthe, moonshine

To the brewed, distilled, and fermented Ones!

Hail to Kvasir’s Kin

Brewed by blood and spit

Made with magic and megin

Hail to Yeast’s Children

Who feast upon sugar and convert its contents

Yielding the blessed brews!

Hail to the Living Spirits

Who gift insight and intuition through imbibing

Intoning the seer through Your songs!

Hail to the Holy Spirits

Who bring vision and virtue in verse

Clearing the way for the poets’ power

Hail to the Wandering Spirits

Who have crossed the Worlds in wonder

Courage and comradery following Your course

Hail to the Power-wielding Spirits

Whose bodies bear magic, megin, and medicines

Sharing strength sustained through Your sacrifice

Hail to the Generous Ones

Whose offered lykr brings luck

Worthy gift in Gebo to the Ginnreginn

Hail to the Alcohol Spirits!

Cider, lager, tequila, gin

Liquer, cognac, brandy, bitters

To the brewed, distilled, and fermented Ones!

Patreon Topic 72: On Sacred Herbs

If you want to submit a topic you would like me to write on for this blog or my Patreon, sign up for the Ansuz level or above here on my Patreon. From Maleck comes this topic:

“Localizing practice and sacred herbs. What do you do when your tradition’s sacred herbs aren’t native or are even invasive to your locale? How about finding new sacred herbs native to you (while avoiding appropriation)?”

I think part of localizing our polytheist and animist religions is a bit of a balancing act. It also requires us to ask a profound question, and at least to find a working answer: What makes a particular herb or group of herbs sacred?

What differentiates a sacred herb from another herb is that I hold relationship with that herb in a way that is fundamentally different than other herbs. It is similar to why I may find a rock or grove of trees sacred and not every tree sacred. I also recognize that certain herbs, just as with certain trees and rocks, carry megin within them that facilitates or is itself a carrier of a sacred relationship. An example of a sacred herb is Ama Una, Grandmother Joy, aka mugwort. She is sacred because it is a cleansing herb and we hold a powerful relationship. She acts with my souls in ways that are profound, whether in Her work of cleansing, in providing space and means of communication with Ginnreginn, or in blessing people, places, and/or things. Something that struck me awhile back was that mugwort was known as “poor man’s tobacco” and more recently “sailor’s tobacco”. In the lessons I have been given by Ojibwe friends regarding tobacco’s place, this seems to be a similar way that Ama Una works with me and with most others I have spoken with. That is, She is a cleansing herb, an herb of communication, an herb that assists with sacred dreaming, and a blessing herb.

Now that we have an idea of what a sacred herb is: “What do you do when your tradition’s sacred herbs aren’t native or are even invasive to your locale?”

I have yet to actually grow my own sacred herbs, particularly the Heathen Nine Sacred Herbs as laid out in Nigon Wyrta Galdor (Nine Herbs Charm) in the Lacnunga manuscript. For my part I generally buy my herbs cut and dried locally where I can such as through Twisted Things, or through Adventures in Homebrewing, where they are sold as an additive to brewing. When I need larger bulk orders of herbs, such as when I am going to be tending a Sacred Fire and will need lots of offerings, I go to Starwest Botanicals.

When I was planning on growing sacred herbs they were going to be grown in pots for the most part. Given we have a lot of patio space I may do that this year. I am still looking at what will be the best options for growing them and keeping them from taking over my yard and out of the woods behind our home. Sometimes nonnative plants can be quite useful to the local ecology. However, when they’re invasive or just plain crowd out native species, it’s best to do what you can to avoid that. If all you can do is get the sacred herbs from someone else that is fine.

“How about finding new sacred herbs native to you (while avoiding appropriation)?”

If you want to avoid appropriation then educating yourself on what appropriation is would be the first step. Websites like this one here can be a good starting point. What appropriation is not is noticing the similarities of things such as how my Ojibwe friend and I understand and know tobacco and mugwort. It is not learning from folks how to live well with the vættir. I covered this quite a bit back in January 2021 in Topic 39: Decolonizing Magical Practice vs Honoring Ancestral Traditions. An example of appropriation vs exchange from that post is illustrative here: “Smudging is not merely the burning of herbs in a shell or other fire-safe holder. It is a ritual, one I have not been taught or cleared to do. Offering tobacco, so far as I know, is open to everyone, and a good gift to almost every vaettr I have encountered.”

If there are sacred plants to Native folks that live in your area that you want to establish a relationship with and/or are stepping forward in your útiseta or other method of spiritual contact, then asking a representative of that tribe how best to interact with these plants, if you can in a respectful way, is best. I am lucky in that I was shown sacred ways to interact with tobacco, cedar, sweetgrass, and sage by an Ojibwe friend. While I am grateful for all my friend has shared with me, this is neither a culture I belong to nor can I teach about. In addition, the way I was shown may not be correct for all places or vættir.

For Heathens, finding new sacred herbs native to your area may be as simple as sitting on the land and listening. Because útiseta, ‘sitting out’ is opening yourself up to vættir I find it best to have at least some good understanding of Heathenry, magic, and good relationships with one’s Ginnreginn. I certainly do not recommend folks new to Heathenry do it, by any stretch. It is a powerful spiritual working, in my experience, one that can leave you quite vulnerable. By doing útiseta in a field or a forest you make space for a plant vættr or several vaettir to make Themselves known.

This giving of space and connection with the vættir, waiting to come to know Who steps forward and wants to establish relationship, is animism in action. It respects the agency and Being of the vættir, and allows for Them to make the first steps in choosing to establish a relationship, and how that will initially unfold. We begin engaging with the vættir we hope to establish relationship with in a sacred way.

Patreon Topic 23: Found Offerings

If you want to submit a topic you would like me to write on for this blog or my Patreon, sign up for the Uruz or Thurisaz level or above here on my Patreon.

From Elfwort comes this topic:

“Would you discuss found offerings to the Gods and wights in the Viking age and before, such as bog offerings?”

It’s important to note that not all found offerings were found in bogs, though that is certainly one place they were found. Other places, as noted by Claude Lecouteux in his book The Traditions of Household Spirits, were beneath the threshold and beneath the home otherwise. These sacrifices would be snakes, cats, roosters, and the like and were likely to be understood as guardians of the home.

Some found offerings, such as bog people who were clearly strangled or had their head bashed in may have been outlaws or even willingly made offering of themselves, while whole ships and their contents may have been offered along coastlines and interred for high-ranking people. It is not known for certain if the bog people were human sacrifices, as this article from The Atlantic covering the subject states, though my inclination is towards that being the case. This paper, At the threshold of the Viking Age by Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide, Niels Bonde, and Terje Thun, explores the ship offerings in a particular case in Kvalsund, Norway. Boat parts and whole boats put into the bog would have been known as bog offerings. The famous Oseberg ship is another example of a ship offering.

Why would this have been done? In the case of the Kvalsund bog offering the authors posit that “Because vessels and water are at the core of the activity at this particular locality, and because there is a high risk of shipwrecking in this area, the vessel offerings may have been related to this danger in order to prevent shipwrecks, and therefore save or bring back lives, which is an element of fertility rituals in the widest sense.” The  Oseberg ship, meanwhile, was a burial site. In the case of coastal offerings we could see non-burial ship offerings as made to Norðr, or perhaps to Rán and Ægir. We can speculate that ship burials on land were likely started with elaborate ceremonies that, when finished, would continue to celebrate the lives of those ‘aboard’. The ship itself was a way of securing good passage to the afterlife.

What does all this mean for the modern Heathen? We have a wide variety of ways to take care of our offerings, and that some of these methods of offerings are as old as time. It also points to some interesting ideas about setting up a household guardian. Now, I am not saying every Heathen should go out and bring home a snake, cat, etc to sacrifice to put under their theshold. However, it is important to think about why these sacrifices were made. These were invitations to the vaettr to take up residence inside the house, to guard and care for it. I am all for reclaiming our traditions of sacrifice, though I do not think folks would sacrifice what we now think of as pet animals like a cat or snake.

So, what can we do instead? We could ask the vaettr of a given animal to inhabit a substitute offering, such as one made of bread that we ritually slaughter and place beneath the threshold. Modern vulture culture provides us another way to bring this idea into modern Heathenry. Most of us work with found remains or those that result from a hunt. We could work with the skeleton or other remains of a willing animal or group of animals, and make offerings to them prior to deposition beneath the threshold. While these methods do not have the potency of a ritual sacrifice, for those who lack the skill or desire to these are important modern ways of engaging in practices alike to the old ways.

What about modern boat offerings? Given the proliferation of trash and waste in our oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds, it is probably not the best idea to mimic our Ancestors in this way. Besides, as noted in the At the threshold paper, “Kvalsund was a bog at the time, not a lake, but the site was turned into a pond due to ritual construction and deposition.” Our offerings literally have the power to radically alter the environment. Taking care as to what and how we offer is important. So, should we carry on ship offerings? No, I would not. Besides, while the boats were made of materials that could decay over time modern boats do not.

Taking into consideration local needs for trees, including the need to retain old growth forest, to keep soil from eroding, and to reduce habitat loss, the use of whole logs to make a ship for the use of an offering, regardless of how impressive or potent it is, cannot be justified. Even seemingly benign rearrangement of stones in rivers to make cairns can have detrimental effects on the local environment, so here too we should be care what, if anything, we leave behind. If we are to leave offerings they should be compostable, or otherwise able to break down wherever we leave the offering without detrimental effect. Consider how much of the Oseberg ship was left intact despite burial and the composition of materials in it.

So does this mean we Heathens should not leave physical offerings? Of course not. It means that we need to be careful in regards to what we offer, where we offer it, and how we offer things. This honors the thing we offer and the Beings we offer it to. This honors and respects the life of the Beings we make offerings of, the Beings we offer it to, the Beings (such as Fire, Water, etc) that we offer through, and the landvaettir from which the offerings came and where those offerings will be laid down.

Offerings

I wrote this post a few days ago, but I find it is still quite relevant.  

I am writing a small paper with a tight deadline, and I have racked my brain the last two days trying to think of how to start.  I know that once I start I can at least get somewhere well enough that I have ground under my feet.  I just can’t make it happen.  I’m frustrated and staring down the barrel at a deadline in a day, and I want to write this well.  So I do what people like me do when they hit a wall: I make an offering.

I am poor.  At this moment I have -$0.01 in my checking account.  When I buy things purely as offerings, even if they are cheap, that means a great deal to me, and from everything the Gods, Spiritkeepers, Ancestors, and vaettir have said and shown me, it does to Them too.  So I made coffee.  Coffee is one of the few things, with the taboos I am under, that I can enjoy.  My wonderful fiancee recently bought me two bags of coffee, one of is open.  It is medium roast Arabica , and tastes wonderful.  I brewed a cup and took the first half of it, put it into my coffee cup, and poured it out in offering to Them next to a bush.

I came back in, sat down, and started writing.  After a few minutes the words started flowing, and eventually, I had something written.

I don’t believe every relationship, or even every exchange is quite so quid pro quo, but sometimes when you need help and you ask, offering in good Gebo, the Holy Powers respond.

Storytelling

I sat in the dark with my son after night prayers, and a question came to me.

I asked him: “Do you have any questions about the Gods?”

His answer: “Who is Sif?”

It kind of surprised me; his question was not “What are the Gods?” or “Why is such-and-such this way?”.  He wanted to get to know the Gods we prayed to.

It has been awhile since we had read the stories or talked deeply about the Gods.  So, when he asked the question I did something that came naturally: I told a story.  I told him She is a Goddess, the wife of Thor, and we call to Her, thanking Her for Her generosity in the night prayer.  He asked why She was a Goddess of generosity, and I slipped into the story of how She kept Her composure when Loki burst into the hall, and still offered Him mead, as told in the Lokasenna.  He asked me why she would have been angry at Loki.  I told my son of how Loki had slain the doorman and insulted the Gods in Aegir’s hall, something one was not supposed to do.  He then asked why She would be angry with Loki.  So, I told him of how Sif’s hair had been cut by Loki before this, and still, She offered Loki to calm Himself and join the Gods in Aegir’s Hall.  He smiled, and he understood.  We worship Her, as well as Loki because They are our Gods.  They are not perfect; They are powerful, beautiful, mischievous, and so much more.  I saw my son’s face light up and crack into a grin as he asked what happened when Thor found out Loki had cut His wife’s hair.  He asked me smaller questions as the story went on, and it changed how I told the story.

He asked “Did Thor want to hurt Him?  What did Loki do?”  So I told of how Loki went down to the Dvergar and asked them to make Him a head of golden hair for Sif, hair that lived as Her had, and yet was made of gold.  His eyes lit up, still smiling, and he asked if Loki had been punished by the Aesir for what He did to Sif.  No, son, Loki made amends with Sif, giving Her that golden hair.  Thor may have wanted to, but Loki was not hurt; He had done as He promised, and made amends.

He came to know many Gods better tonight, not just Sif.  Did I tell him the whole story, of how Loki also convinced the sons of Ivaldi to make Skiðblaðnir and Gungnir?  No, it was not important at the moment.  He has heard the full story before, we’ve read it together.  I did emphasize how important the gifts Loki won were, how His mouth was sewn shut because Loki had wagered His head and lost.  That is the power of storytelling: we have to decide what to emphasize, what to put aside when we tell it, so it speaks to our listeners.  It does not make these two holy items, or their gifting to the Gods any less important.  It does not make Loki wagering His head less.  The telling of this part of the story would have lessened the impact of the story between Loki and Sif in this moment, and gotten before the point I wanted to make to my son: Loki made amends.  That when one makes amends one should not be punished further.

Our stories have to live from our lips and hearts to the ears and hearts of others.  If our stories do not live in us, what worth is there in telling them?

The Landvaettir

I was asking around for something to write on, and my friend Rhyd Wildermuth of Paganarch asked me to write on the landvaettir.

Landvaettir are spirits of the land. They can be as large as a whole city, stretch as large as a valley, or be as grand as a mountain. They can be ancient trees and boulders, or small rocks and spots of land. They are the living spirits of the land itself. We share each inch and each moment of our lives with landvaettir. They are in the farms, the wild places, and the cities. They are our homes, and the wide variety of materials that went into them; I call these housevaettir.

I have found that landvaettir can present us with close, intimate interactions, such as through direct messages or omens. These I tend to get around my home and in local parks. Landvaettir may also be distant, barely noticing us or not desiring interaction with humans at all, which I have felt in a city and in a forest. They may also be more subtle than a direct message, such as a feeling of awe and presence that I felt standing on Mount Beacon in New York or standing beside an ancient oak tree on a friend’s property. The landvaettir on a single bit of land may be more or less inclined to interact with humans; on my friend’s land the ancient oak is quite friendly, whereas the old willow is not as much.

Being a good ally and neighbor with the landvaettir is in our best interests. When we live well in and on the land, we live well with the landvaettir, and so, the environment and our lives are better for it. Living well with the landvaettir can be as simple as keeping the land clean of things like harsh chemicals and trash, or more complicated such as the regular offerings I give to the housevaettir. Just as each person’s relationship will be different with a given God, so too with landvaettir. They may more readily like or interact or bless certain people, especially those who live well on Them and live well with Them.

When I enter a city I try to find the central vaettr or vaettir (spirit or spirits respectively) and make an offering. Sometimes it is something small, such as a pinch of tobacco or mugwort, and others a bit of a drink if I visit a local coffee shop. This is not only polite, as a guest within the vaettir’s home, but it also means I am living in conscious awareness that when I walk within the city, I am walking within a vaettr, and that It is as alive as a forest, or my home’s land. There is also a practical side to a good relationship with landvaettir: They can give us a head’s up, even if it is something small like hairs standing up on the back of our neck or a sense of foreboding if we should not go down this street or to that area. I once found myself lost in a city local to me, and after about an hour of wandering, I made an offering of some coffee to the city’s landvaettir. Shortly after I found my way. By opening myself up to a good relationship with the city’s vaettir, and then following through and listening I was able to find my way.

I live in a semi-rural area; the blessings of the landvaettir are not only apparent on the farms I pass, but in our own backyard. The asparagus season has started, and the first week of May many stalks have grown large and tall enough to cut. Before I go to harvest I make a small prayer, saying: “Thank you landvaettir. Thank you Freyr. Thank you for this harvest.” Then I might say “Ves heil!” or “Hail!” before or as I cut. The landvaettir allowed my family to eat well last night, and provided enough that I could eat tonight at work. As I associate the asparagus with Freyr I hail Him as well, for He has blessed the asparagus as the landvaettir have, helping them grow well.

The old maxim of ‘politics is local’ very much applies to my politics in regards to the landvaettir. Because the landvaettir are not given a voice in today’s mainstream society, part of our role as people is to be their voice, advocate, and/or activist. That’s right, everyone that works with the landvaettir signed up to become the Lorax.  How could you not? If these vaettir, these partners in our lives, are to perpetuate and grow, and keep on being living ecosystems it is on us to help protect them from ourselves, whether it is picking up trash in a park, keeping chemicals off of our lawns, growing native plants wherever we can, and/or direct action to protect the wild landvaettir. In reshaping our relationship with the land itself as not only ecosystem and habitat, but also a very real relationship with the land as one between us and other very real and present spiritual beings, such a relationship requires action to maintain and grow well.

This relationship extends, when you unfold it, to everyday decisions such as what we purchase, and how we treat the remains of what we buy and consume. When I began living at home again and really working with the landvaettir a few years ago, I began composting all the organic waste that I could in our home. It is amazing how much of it there is, and how it enriches the soil, this loamy black soil, that then helps the plants grow. What is also amazing about it, is how it makes me feel when I take the 5 gallon bucket out to the compost and hail the landvaettir, Niðogg, and Hela. It makes me happy, it makes the landvaettir happy, and it helps my family become more self-sufficient. Now that I have my own vehicle, because of how many animals I see by the side of the road unable to be eaten by carrion eaters, I am preparing to pick up animal carcasses and save and use the hide and bones wherever I can. I am just learning how to do leatherworking and rather than buy from a provider, where I can I would like to produce my own. There are a lot of miles for the leather alone (not to mention the transport, slaughter, and so on of a cow) to come from a distributor like Jo-Ann Fabrics or direct from Tandy just so I can make a bag. Just as the compost heap we have began with a single bucket, so every decision we make to better our relationship with the landvaettir grows.

Living with the landvaettir is not just the giving of offerings or planting native plants, it is the entire mindset in which one approaches Them, the land we live on, and the way in which we live our lives. This is why I mention earlier people who live on the land and people who live with the land. Living with the landvaettir requires us to engage these beings on Their level, physically and spiritually. It is to enter into a living relationship, one in which there may be a push and pull, and one which will definitely require Gebo, gift-for-a-gift. The landvaettir offers Their bounty with the asparagus harvest; what gift can I give Them in kind? How best can I give the gift in return for Their gift of good food? When my ability to live comes out of the ground, for both water and food (we have a well system) what gifts can I give in return for all that sustains my life? If I were only living well on the land these questions would be straightforward and practical, such as taking care of the soil, using natural means of pest control, keeping the water clean, etc. Since I am living with the landvaettir these points still matter, and carry additional meaning and spiritual weight. I also have to consider, in living with the landvaettir, what They want. So far They are happy with the composting, the prayers, and the offerings we leave by Their trees. They may have more requirements in the future, and in maintaining a good relationship with Them we will do our best to meet Them. After all, we are guests on what has been and always will be Theirs, and Them.

We belong to the landvaettir rather than They belong to us. They are the Beings by whose bodies and partnership we are able to eat, breathe, drink, shelter ourselves, and live well. We live upon Them and within Them; Their bodies are the means by which we clothe ourselves and build our homes. Their spirits resonate all around us, whether from beneath our feet from the carpet, concrete or dirt, the wind in the willows, the pages of a book, or the plastics and metals that form your computer or mobile device and allow you to see this post.

In understanding this, we can understand too, that we are Ancestors in the making, as well as landvaettir in the making. The lich (the body) is a part of our soul, and it stays behind while other parts of the soul matrix move on. Our body then becomes part of the land, wherever it eventually ends up. What land we become part of, how we become part of that land, what we do to that land when we become part of it should be something we think about. When we die we become embodied in the land we are put on and/or within.

Becoming one with the landvaettir is unavoidable; how we live and if we die well with Them is up to us.

Odin Project: Day 17

The paltry gift given well | far passes the rich

given without care;

Water and bread | best mead and meat

when spoiled is the feast