Patreon Poem/Prayer/Song 70: For Freyr Victorious

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This request was made by Maleck for Freyr, returning victorious from the Mound.

The roads of Hel are known to me

Over the Bridge and through forest and field

I walk with the knowledge of ancient paths

Tread by my blood-soaked feet

The ways between are trod in silence

Vitality in each step, and life springing forth

I walk and life returns in my steps from Death

Antler swaying on a cord at my side

Helheim’s lands roll up to the frozen ground

Ice stretches beyond the horizons and snow blankets all

I walk and little mosses grace my passing

Steam cleansing my warming corpse

Fire graces my bare chest and plants warm kisses

Nerves and sinew stretch and reach and sigh

I walk and ashes cling to my steps

My fingers grace dark wood that breathes new life

The noiseless yawn moves the air

Potential and nothing settle peace in my heart and mind

I walk between a roiling river and the liminal breath

My path winding about the current’s course

The deep dark earth welcomes my journey

Singing picks and voices accompany my torchlit steps

I walk by and see the forges and yards of mighty crafters

Passing, my gaze full of witness to glory and might

Forests line the mouth’s exit

Silvery voices welcome me home and bid me stay

I walk in silence, refusal spoken in my stride

My hof’s door left open for my return

Trackless woods and deep valleys invite me

Animals saunter and monsters track my way

I walk without fear among the Jötnar home

For my gifts bring peace and life to Them as well

Fields of wheat wave in greeting to me

Orchards and lakes and sagging bushes thank my passing

I walk in fertile places that I have renewed

My birthplace heralds my passage and bids me return

The peaks of homes kiss the clouds and the walls open their arms

Work and war clash around my ears, familiar calls ring out

I walk unbound in the halls and gaze upon the seeing seat

Memories follow me on the rainbow road

The expanse of Jörð invites me, finally

The blood-stained sickle gripped in my wet-eyed wife’s hand

I walk and lie in the mound She has made and breathe

Reborn and victorious I rise again

Patreon Topic 59: On Vanaheim

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From Emi comes this topic:

“Do a discussion on Vanaheim.”

When we look to the usual sources, Vanaheimr is about as attested as Álfheimr is. It is explored in Vafþrúnismál, Chapter 23 of the Gylfanginning, and in the Heimskringla in the Ynglinga Saga. That’s it.

The folklore, unfortunately, tells us nothing. I have yet to find any folklore directly relevant to Vanaheimr. I also have found nothing on the denizens of Vanaheim Themselves, only the main Gods of Freyja, Freyr, Njorðr, and for those who count Her among the Vanir, Nerðus. If anyone has folklore related to Vanaheimr or the Vanir Themselves I would definitely be interested in seeing it.

As an aside, I find it rather interesting that the Nine Worlds often find themselves remarked as being, in some ways, laying in one direction or another in relation to Miðgarðr. Miðgarðr, of course, being the Middle Enclosure, is in the middle of this cosmological map. Niflheimr and Helheimr are in the North, Jötunheim in the East, Muspelheimr and Vanaheimr in the South, Álfheimr is South and perhaps above Miðgarðr, Svartalfheimr in the North and/or below, and finally, Asgarðr which is either above Miðgarðr or perhaps West. If you are setting up a stalli specifically for Beings of one of the Nine Worlds you may want to set that up in a place that corresponds to the World’s direction. There are also many beautiful artist renditions of Yggdrasil, including this one by Sam Flegal.

Sam Flegal’s Illustration of Yggdrasil

So, from here on out we are talking personal experiences.

I have only visited Vanaheimr a handful of times going on heimgang (World/Realm walking) or as it is often better known, journeying. My impression of the World is that of growing cycles. Some of the places I have gone within Vanaheim have been akin to old forests, plains stretching with animals like buffalo or aurochs and an even wider variety of animal and plant life I am sure I have only just scratched the surface on. There are places in Vanaheim that look like they have come right out of an early medieval book on the ideal farmstead, only….there is something more right about them. The wild places seem both more wild and yet also just…more. I get the sense in this World that things grow, die, and consume each other until they balance one another.

Something is just…good about the place. There is a sense of being lived-in and also that everything is going as it should, in the right season and pace. The landvaettir and various watervaettir felt extremely contented. If there are more industrial areas I have not visited them yet, and it would not surprise me if there are given Njorðr’s connection with the sea, commerce, and fishing. What I felt during my most recent visit, on invitation, was a sense of deep peace. While I am sure this World holds its dangers, I never felt under threat while I was there.

It is a World I do not have much experience with, and I will be visiting more in the future. I would be interested in readings others’ experiences with these Worlds!

Patreon Poem/Prayer/Song 57: For the Sewing/Growing/Planting Season

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This request was made by Emi for the Sewing/Growing/Planting Season.

The Sun and Moon have danced with Their Wolves

Winter is behind and Spring is here

Let the Earth wake and warm

Bearing seeds to sprout

The hands have worked and the mounds are made

The land and seeds are ready

Rain falls from swollen skies

Roots hold soil steady

Root and stem and leaf wax well

Watchful eyes and careful hands

Let each be great and graceful

Living in community

The land and its spirits are hospitable hosts

Blesses seed and sower alike

Thriving in the good ground

Blessing all comers

Seiðr Song

Rocking, rocking

It begins small

In the seed, in the seiðr

It erupts from below

The power unleashed

In the seed, in the seiðr

It builds up through the middle

The being grows

From the seed, from the seiðr

It extends to the Worlds

The hamr is strong

From the seed, from the seiðr

It bears fruit to the Worlds

The megin is mighty

From the seed, from the seiðr

Its fruit leaves seeds

The cycle renews

From the seed, from the seiðr

Patreon Poem/Prayer/Song 52: For the Vanir Tribe

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This request was made by Emi for the Vanir Tribe.

---

Seership and sacrifice

Seed and strength

Salve and sea

The Vanir bless the Worlds with megin

War and wound

Weal and word

Wonder and will

The Vanir shape the Worlds with megin

Art and Álfar

Arrangement and awe

Ardor and affection

The Vanir seed the Worlds with megin

Strength and softness

Supple and stalwart

Steel and stone

The Vanir guard the Worlds with megin

Burned and born

Breath and bonds

Blood and beauty

The Vanir enliven the Worlds with megin

The Lay of the Ancestors in Ragnarök Time

This poem was begun March 30th, 2015, and finally, I had the inspiration to finish it.

Ancestors ancient! Askr and Embla!

Shoulders supporting the feet of your son

Hear my words as I wander

Sarenth seeks your counsel!

---

Gebo’s ways are woefully wended

The Lakes lay lacquered with rot;

How to heal the horrors of humans

Between the spirits and society?

---

The forests find the foe fierce,

Blood-embers eager to eat;

How to end the hunger

When the mouth may never close?

---

Thus the Disir directed:

Ally where one can find,

and stand strong upon the shore;

Galdr and growl, giving no peace

---

To the mouth give mending

Bind its baleful maw

Never will it quit its need

To eat seed, soil, and tree

---

Grow well and wise with work

Spirits will show the steps to strength

Listening, learn the lay of land

Whispers come the ways of waters

---

Hearths are hallowed in holiness

Eldr held whole in every home

The binds bite bitter the breaker

When the ways are walked well

Patreon Song/Poem/Prayer 28 -For Skínandi Freyr

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 prayer was requested from my third Raiðo patron for Skínandi Freyr.

Skínandi, Skínandi, Skínandi!

Bright shining Holy God!

Blessing borne by Sunna’s ride

Who warms the soil in Harpa

Who blesses the ground with greatness in Heyannir

Who nourishes the people in Haustmánuðr

O Ginnvanr!

Who always blesses in beauty

In Súmar the fields and Álfar rejoice

In Vetr the world waits and rests

Ever-shining, ever-holy

You dance with Jörð, with Nerðus, with Sunna

Dappled light shining down on forest, field, and fen

The seasons move beneath You, shining One

Life from death from life from death

Ever gipt fá gipt

Hail Skínandi Freyr!

Patreon Topic 26: On Regional Cultus

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From Maleck Odinsson comes this topic:

“Regional Cultus. Not just in the realm of honoring the local spirits, but also in how the gods are reflected differently in different times and places.”

When I first started writing on this I was approaching this purely from an academic perspective, noting the resources we have available to us are mostly coming after conversion and almost all the earliest sources through Christian writers. The scholars and academics who later gave us interpretation and understanding of these sources, and even the archaelogists, all are operating within a Protestant Christian dominated background.

Generally, our Gods in the academic fields are not being approached as Gods. We have living, dynamic relationships with Them. Even over the course of my life my cultus with Óðinn has gone through changes, so I would hardly expect in a generation other Heathens to carry anything like the same relationship as I. When I began to worship Him, He came to me sometimes as Father, but mostly as Rúnatýr, and Yggr primarily. He was fierce, harsh, and a taskmaster in the early times. He still is at times.

How the Gods are reflected differently in different times and places depends on how the Gods fit into the landscape/environment we live in now, and the relationships we hold with Them. I would have a far harder time relating to Skaði if I lived in a place without snow, and relating to the Gods of the ocean is a lot harder for me here in the Great Lakes than it is when I visited the ocean. I still hold cultus for the Gods of the ocean, but it is a more remote one, less in-my-face than that of the Great Lakes Goddesses.

A big difference in regional cultus I can confidently point to is mine with Jörð, Freya, Freyr, and Gerða. I relate to Jörð through the Earth I stand on, and while Jörð is still Jörð wherever in Miðgarð I go on Her, I relate to Her differently here, especially in my home, vs a hotel room. The difference between worshiping Her on land I have helped cultivate vs a hotel room is quite stark. I have no relationship to the land in a hotel room beyond a place to rest my head. My thanks to Her is much more general, eg She is of the place, and I am grateful for Her being the floor and eventually the ground beneath my feet. Contrast this with the relationship I hold with Her being the good, black Earth I helped to till and plant in that our good harvest has grown from. My cultus with Freya, Freyr, and Gerða is embedded in no small part in that same gardening. It is not that I cannot relate to Them outside of the home, the hearth, or the garden, but that it lacks the specific ways in which our relationships flow as they do there.

The asparagus plant is one group of vaettir in which I relate quite a bit to these Gods locally. As before, I associate Jörð with the garden it grows in. The plant itself clearly associated with Freyr given its virility, fertility, and phallic shape. It is also associated with Gerða in that to harvest it, it must be cut down, and this fits in with my understanding of Freyr as a Sacrificed God whose blood renews the fertility of the Earth. Freya I associate with the pollinators, especially the bees and their sweetness, and the preparation work that must go on so the plants can prosper. It is not just through the garden and all the vaettir within it that I relate to these Gods. I relate to these Gods through the actions I take with the land. Tilling, planting, gardening, weeding, harvesting, all of this is done in relationship with the landvaettir, with Jörð, with Freya, with Freyr, with Gerða, and with the Ancestors, especially those who farmed and/or gardened. All of this with just one kind of plant. How much more so with a garden! How much more so with a biome!

Regional cultus grows from our living relationship with the environment, and if I can find that much connection in and through a single plant then we can certainly make them through the land we live on. It is worth pointing out that Yggdrasil holds the Worlds, and the Worlds are also in relationship with one another. Asgarðr and Jötunheimr are across a river, Ífingr, from each other. Jotunheimen is the name of a range of mountains in Norway. The Worlds are said to be in different direction, eg Niflheim to the North, Muspelheim to the South. We can likewise locate our relationship with the Nine Worlds in such ways, much as our forebears did with regard to directions and the landscape. Perhaps rather than strictly in the East, Jötunheimr is in or has connections to the World in the far more wild forest behind the home. A special rock becomes a hörgr, a stand of trees a vé, and from there perhaps new relationships form with Jötun Gods.

It is really hard predict how regional cultus will develop over time. After all, my family has only lived in Michigan for five generations, including myself and my children. Between major predicaments like climate change and peak oil, the unfolding of the next election and the consequences from that, our unique land here in Michigan, and the unfolding relationships we hold right now, it is anyone’s guess how it will develop. Given the ongoing Work and relationship I have with Óðinn, our strong commitment to direct experiences of our Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir on the land we live, and our work on the land, we will have many avenues to understand our Gods and develop relationships through.

Patreon Song/Prayer/Poem 27 -For Freyr, God of the Gravemound

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 prayer was requested from Maleck Odinsson for Freyr, God of the Gravemound.

You danced in the field

Bells tingling with each step

Blessing

You came to the holy place

Hair wildly dancing

Hallowing

You knelt before the blót vé

Hands open to all

Hailing

You opened the mound

The Dead awaken

Gathering

You open your hands

Inviting Living to Dead

Clasping

You witness the meeting

Binding ties again

Weaving

O Freyr, God of the Gravemound

You bless us with connection

On the mound, on the good Earth

Descendant meets the Ancestor

Ancestor meets the Descendant

By Your blessing!

Hail Freyr, Haugrdróttin!

Patreon Topic 23: Found Offerings

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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.