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From Maleck comes this topic:
“Now that you’ve finished the prayers to the Pack Spirits, what have you learned?”
I was honestly surprised when Maleck approached me to do the prayers for the Pack Spirits. I had been introduced to Them as spirits belonging to an initiatory tradition and had not ever thought they would be a group of spirits I would have interaction with, let alone be able to write prayers for Them. When I reached out to Them, not only did this group of spirits respond, They were eager for me to write prayers for each of Them.
The Pack Spirits are just that, and while the particular mysteries and training of the Pack Tradition are closed to initiates, the Pack Spirits Themselves are quite accessible. So, I have learned how these archetypal and yet communal/collective/individual spirits operate, and at least some of my own ‘placement’ with Them as an outsider. Sometimes you need an outsider, and while I connected very readily and well with these spirits, connecting with Them and writing prayers for Them just confirmed that remaining on the outside of this particular initiation is a good thing. It allows me to see aspects of Them others would not from the inside, and it allows a kind of fluidity in relationship with Them that I may not feel were I an initiate.
Writing for The Pack, The Pack Ancestors, Earth, Silence, Pack, Howl, Sky, Hunt, and Prey has allowed me to connect with these Míkilvaettir (Big/Power Spirits) and has given me insight into connections that They carry with many of my own Ginnreginn, and myself. It has allowed me to feel those connections, eg through the Earth, in new and dynamic ways that differs from connecting to Jörð. She is distinctly Her, and yet, through these different vaettir, a new understanding and connection with the Earth emerges. Likewise through each Míkilvaettir and the associated Beings I could name in conjunction with Them. It broadens and narrows the scope of Who I am interacting with, experiencing, and coming to know.
Something that emerged through the prayers as I wrote them was personal connection. Many of them are written in “I” format, as I experienced many of the prayers directly before I wrote them down. Sometimes it was being taken in my hamr, my second skin, to another place and made to experience Them. Sometimes it was a personal revelation that They brought forward in me, whether through an inborn experience of something that They hit in me or something that really struck me in experiencing it in my hamr. Sometimes it was the feeling of wildness that I reveled in and had to somehow bring that experience forward in the poem, prayer, and/or song. Sometimes it was the conflicting emotions, or even the various vaettir I experienced within the experience of the individual Míkilvaettr. Each brought something forward in me, each called in to me as it were, and brought something out of me to put into the poems, prayers, and songs that I wrote. Though each is a powerful initiatory Being unto Itself each gave a non-initiate powerful insight into Them in dynamic ways.
Through the experience of each of these vaettir, and the experience of having to translate each of those experiences into poems, prayers, and songs, I have learned new understanding of and appreciation for these Beings, and the connections that each brings forward. The connections each brings with/to us is dynamic, and if we let it build, can be quite powerful whether the connection is found within us personally, through the old Ancestors like the first ones to have domesticated wolves, or in new ways with Gods we have worshipped for a long time. They bring a kind of ancient yet fresh wisdom, power, and ferality I think could be a source of profound experience for folks, whether or not they initiate into Pack Tradition or Pack Magic.
Sarenth Odinsson 