Hail to You O Flame-hair
Hail to You O Smoke
Hail to You of the Silver Tongue
Of mad laugh and the joke
You Who’s Crossed all the Worlds
Who’s crossed a hundred doors
Who’s crossed countless homes of Gods and men
With the blessing You have borne
Praise to You who raised up high the Fires in all our kin
Covered in blood, Midgard made
Who will make It once again
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 first Ansuz patron for Loki.
I am the biting fly, hovering at your ear and reminding you I am still here
I am the lusting horse, dragging you from your work to have some fun
I am the writhing serpent, protecting you from the plague bearers
I am the barking seal, diving into waters you fear to see
I am the grinning fox, teasing you to remember there is always beauty and laughter to be had
I am the wise salmon, showing you the way to twist so you understand
I am the little flame, warming your heart when it grows cold
I am the inventive spider, showing you how to knot so nothing escapes your grasp
I am the gentle breath, stoking the embers of your heart to bright flame
I am the Shapeshifter, for every shape is open to Me
I am the Many-Skinned, for I have shared skin with many
I am the Walker Between the Worlds, for I have walked them all and will again, always, forever!
I am Loki!
I am Loki!
I am Loki!
I breathe in slowly
Vindrvaettir about me
Drawing the holy smoke inside
I exhale a prayer
I breathe in slowly
Vatnvaettir thrum in my chest
Each limb enlivened
I exhale tension
I breathe in slowly
Eldrvaettir dance on the cigar’s tip
Dancing a holy ring on my lips
I exhale offering
I breathe in slowly
Jorðvaettir reach up to draw me down
My roots settle in
I exhale relief
I breathe in slowly
Ancestors sit beside me
Speaking, listening, smoking with me
I exhale with Them
I breathe in slowly
Gods on every side
Their Presence comforting, hearing my prayers
I exhale thanks
In a lecture held by James Howard Kunstler and William Fulton at the Congress for New Urbanism, both men go over in brief their experiences with and of urbanism as they grew up through it over the last 50 or so years. One of the striking things just listening to these two talk is how drastic the landscape changed in each others’ times being alive. Kunstler recalled experiencing what he called Central Park being the most lively and beautiful it has ever been after the financialization of the economy took place with the destruction of downtown NYC’s neighborhoods as a result, to the destruction wrought by urban planning in Auburn, NY in Fulton’s hometown. Throughout their lectures both men dug deep into the understanding that their relationship with the land and to the land fundamentally changed as urbanization dismantled peoples’ relationship to the land. What I appreciated about both is they both provided context to how each place looked historically, with Kunstler taking a detour to look at Buffalo’s progress over the last 100 years or so. The buildings that were torn down to make room for the new settlements went from places where one could walk, and as Fulton spoke, talked about how the landscape essentially went unchanged once the major highway cut Albany off from its residential zones, causing the zone to wither.
While the history of these places and their relationship to the burgeoning booms of the 40s and 50s are interesting in themselves, what it says about peoples’ relationship to the land is even more interesting to me. Kunstler roundly mocks people for the notion of building multistory food farms in city centers, and his primary reason for is that it is throwing a lot of resources at a problem while providing no long-term means for maintaining these structures. He points out that the urban areas are primarily for urban activities, and that the outskirts of cities and beyond, the rural areas, are the ones we have always historically grown the majority of our food in. That we are trying to get the cities, especially the multiplex cities to do this, is actively fighting against the point of having cities. This is not to say Kunstler is against folks growing their own food or urban gardening, but that we are ignoring the point of cities by trying to have the city do the job of rural areas by introducing ‘urban farming’ to them. For him this is no more apparent than these multimillion dollar projects of vertical farming.
Think about this for a minute. For the most part the cities’ soil is trapped under Gods-know-how-much concrete, steel, asphalt, and wood, and what soil is able to be gotten to may need quite a lot of remediation before it is ready to grow healthy food in. So this means, just on the basis of having enough soil to have enough for a multistory vertical garden, that much of that would have to be trucked in from somewhere else. The vertical gardens of the kinds that Kunstler was showing that are being proposed are massive, requiring millions of dollars in material and labor just to get built and Gods-knows how much more in maintenance. With climate change and peak oil both bearing down on us such projects are, in a word, untenable. Whether looked at from a cost perspective or a sustainability one, we have neither the treasure nor the resources to do this on the kind of scale that those who propose such techno-fixes would propose. We would be far better to retrofit rooftops to develop solar and wind energy, and retrofit the structure of the rooftops themselves to be able to be grown on and recycle water, use greywater systems, and develop top-of-building gardening and raising of animals. We have the technology available right now, the retrofits would cost the a small fraction of what it would to build wholly new vertical farming facilities, and it would have the potential of giving entire communities the ability to feed themselves far better with no space lost within them to what would probably be out-of-city/state developers.
There is another aspect to this that Kunstler did not touch on, and that is “Who is going to get displaced to make room for these? Who will benefit from this kind of development?” Just looking at the sheer amount of money such infrastructure would require I doubt, very highly, that any of the cities that could use such buildings would get them. If they did, in all likelihood it would generate one of the knock-on effects that the ‘urban farming’ initiatives are building in Detroit: gentrification. Sure, the buying up of and developing of properties is needed in the city. It keeps neighborhoods’ prices from depressing and creating a cascade effect in them. Yet, for many cities that are seeing a resurgence of affluent out-of-towners coming into the city and snatching up abandoned or especially foreclosed homes, it is pricing some folks, especially poor people of color, out of their own neighborhoods.
All these shifts, whether we look at the last 100 years in our own cities, towns, villages, and neighbrohoods, or across the board in how American living and commuting habits have changed since the introduction of the American highway system, provides insight in how we live on and with the land. There was a dynamic shift in how cities, towns, and villages were planned when we transitioned from horse, oxen, and waterways to trains for commuting and development. With the development of and later transition to the automobile these same places went through another shift, with the dominant feature being the main roadway arteries between various centers of industry at first, and more recently finance.
Just taking a look at US-12 here in Michigan shows how powerful these shifts are. The modern US-12 was part of two different and very old Native American trails, the St. Joseph Trail and the Sauk Trail. Both were footpaths for Natives here prior to European settlers arriving. It has always been a major thoroughfair for trade, and in the 1940s it was developed into expressways and freeways. Truck traffic still continues, but it has never really recovered from what expanding the highways have done to it. The aftereffects of the boomtown years can still be seen since US-12 is dotted with old, run-down tourist attractions from the 1970s and before, and the thriving antique shops throughout its run through lower Michigan.
As the train systems were demolished and automotives became our primary mode of transportation, many of the neighborhoods built up along the railroads died the same way our main outlets for shopping and commerce in suburban areas have been declinining since the 2008 financial crisis. Stores are shuttered, and entire areas that had once been full of life with residential communities growing in tandem along the railway, or in our case the main roads of cities and towns, went into foreclosure and short sales. Mom and Pop stores were replaced by larger companies or by centralizing stores in the same way that Wal-Mart, Kroger, and Meijer operates now. Those places that could not be replaced still remain as rotting husks of buildings displaying what once was a thriving place.
It is very sobering to think that automobiles have only been around since 1885, and in the time since, massive use of automobiles have only been around since the 1920s. So the main transportation method we take for granted today has only existed at most for about 133 years, and mass automotive use for 98 years. Before then we had mass transit in the form of electric streetcars, steam ferry, and trains. Before then we had horse, oxen, sailing ships, and of course, our own feet. With that in mind, what we have designed in America is an entire layout in cities, towns, and villages for a way of life that has only been with us for about a hundred years at best and is highly energy and resource intensive to create and maintain.
What does this mean for a polytheist view on these things?
We are bound up in the land we live on. Many of us worship Gods of the Earth, fertility, and local Gods. We worship our Ancestors, and the vaettir are all around us. Most of us don’t live anywhere near our Dead whether that is due to the amount of moving around automotives allow for, for personal ambitions, or the need to find steady work. For my family part of living well with our Ancestors is, where we are able, to live alongside Them. In this case this can mean something as small as an urn getting a place at an Ancestor ve, or as major a work as a burial mound being constructed so we can house our community’s Dead. The vaettir are all around us, no matter where we live. It is in our best interest to align well and live well in gipt fa gipt with all our Holy Powers.
If we are going to live well on the Earth with the Holy Powers we need to develop, revive, and encourage ways of life that align with the Earth’s ability to replenish and live well. We need to reduce or eliminate waste wherever we can, and to design our living arrangements so that we are not just extracting resources without Gebo. We have the cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods we have now. I would have us retrofit what we can in these places and replace what we need to for a sustainable future now while we have the resources to do so. Whatever we do the work we put our hands to needs to be for the best for the environment and future generations who will live there.
This approach to how we plan and maintain our cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods brings living with our Holy Powers out of abstraction and into our physical spaces, into lived everyday relationship with Them. It brings our concerns surrounding how we live in our everyday lives and asks “How can we best honor the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir of this place?” with every decision. It forces us to acknowledge that there are living relationships with Holy Powers to be had regardless of where we are, or with what part of our lives we are engaging with. Water treatment facility? Likely at least one, if not many Gods to be worked with in that, and many vaettir as well. The city square? Public life is acknowledged as having a spiritual dimension, even if not everyone appreciates that spiritual dimension. Parks and streets alike teem with spirits. Designing our living spaces with care will ultimately benefit the community and the bonds we hold together with our Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir. Planning for environmental impact, developing ways that honor our communities and making them places people want to live will help our communities thrive and grow resilient together.
Planning our living spaces does not have to be terribly jarring. We can orient future repair and maintenance projects to make everything as walkable as humanly possible in our cities. We can encourage repair and reuse where we now are encouraged to throw things away and just get a new thing. Encouraging people to live above their businesses where they could would help cut down on wasted space. Developing various districts that make use of locally harvested foods and goods, especially those closest to the our cities and towns, would bring resiliency into these places and in reciprocity, resiliency to those growing and processing these things. Developing intentional interdependent relationships in cottage industries between city, town, and villages with those in rural areas can strengthen bonds between them. Doing this will keep goods and money circulating within and between communities, strengthening bonds and the resiliency of all of those within these relationships.
Encouraging these kinds of investments in our own communities might require modifying entire swathes of building codes depending on how strict they are and the kinds of buildings and industries in a given area. It might require folks to reevaluate how we buy things, how we consume things, and from where we get the needs and wants of our lives. Looking into community efforts to not only put together recycling collections, but composting, can save a lot of space in landfills better put to use in fields and community gardens. Folks will need to decide on where it is best to put their energy. I think that creating more walkable, interconnected, and interdependent places will encourage people to be more active in their communities and develop tighter bonds with their neighbors and the spaces everyone in a community shares.
It is worth thinking about what a climate change and peak oil future looks like. Do not go for doom and gloom; give yourself room to explore the full breadth of human technology and innovation we are privileged to live with in this time. JMG noted in a recent interview he gave that we are not bound to a single time or place in terms of the technologies we can adopt to face the future, and actively encouraged folks to explore what technologies we could make best use of in an age of decline. So yes, that means at some point looking look at what it means to live with intermittent, and perhaps eventually little to no electricity. Look at what it may mean for us to live with little to no gas because much of it would be out of our price range. Once you look around yourself and really see how much work fossil fuels are doing for you, and what climate change can mean for your area, take a breath.
Think about all the technologies we put down because fossil fuels have done so much of the work for us and have taken us out of relationship with the world around us. Our food, our water, how we relate to physical work itself. How we relate to one another. Not everyone can or will farm just as not everyone can or will work metal or wood. There will still be need for writers and artists, laborers, and organizers. There will still be need for folks who know how to make infrastructure, or to design sustainable developments in the places we live. We will still have need of trade, we will still have markets, and we will still have need of means of exchange in some form. We have had cities longer than we have had fossil fuels.
If you think about it, that is damned exciting. If you work with moneyvaettir (money spirits), imagine bringing that dimension of respect for the power of exchange and the power a cultivated relationship that these spirits can bring to trade. When we no longer have our debt-based money system as the primary arbiter of relationships we give space for our relationships with one another to grow in different ways. If you worship Gods who care about governance, imagine bringing the lessons of your Gods to bear in local government work, in layout for the treatment of water, sustainable rain harvesting, or building codes. If you worship Gods who hold theaters as sacred to Them, rebuilding or encouraging a revival of local theater troupes might be a powerful form of devotion. Guilds for craftspeople can be a powerful source of devotion, whether to Gods of the craft, Ancestors (such as masters in the craft who have died), and the vaettir associated with the craft or to crafting in general. Just carrying on a craft or art in general, regardless of skill, can be a form of cultivating relationships with the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir associated with it.
When we allow ourselves to understand ourselves in relationship with our Holy Powers and one another not only in abstract ways, but concerete hand-to-mouth ways, our perspective changes. My understanding of Freyr changed when I recognized and worshiped Him as the God who blessed my asparagus with fertility. When I recognized the asparagus, each stalk a vaettr, as being in relationship with Him, it was a profound shift. Freyr could no longer abstractly be a God of fertility; His fertility was absolutely rooted in my soil and that has fed my family since we began to harvest it. Holiness is rootedness. The mead that I brew is related to many Gods and vaettir, and many of my Ancestors would have brewed their own drinks for their Gods, Ancestors, vaettir, and community. By taking up and engaging in the craft I have engaged in devotion with Kvasir, Gunnlodd, and in different ways, Odin. Likewise, I have worshiped different Ancestors I may not have engaged with, and the vaettir of the mead that I have developed has blossomed into a good, reciprocal relationship.
Through living our religious worldviews, in bringing these ideas of relationship, reciprocity, and wellbeing into our relationships with the lands we live on and the Beings we share this world with, we can avoid the devastating results that business-as-usual visited on Kunstler’s NYC and Fulton’s Albany. We can offer new ways forward in relationship of our societies to the lands we live on. Our neighborhoods may be more walkable, self-sustaining, and resilient. The very way we lay out these things can radically change. Our current ways of doing things are less than 150 years old. We can make our places that we live sustainable again. Arguably, it is one of the biggest shifts we could take so that our societies are in better alignment with Nature.
When it comes to peak oil and climate change we are looking at less is more. A simple example of this in action is a cob building. They can be constructed throughout most of the continental United States from local materials. Cob itself is a combination of soil, clay, and straw. The walls and ceiling are fashioned into multi-foot thick structures, often made in the footprint of the land they are built in. The placement below the frost line and thickness of their walls allows them to regulate heat effectively in most climates, with wood stoves, rocket stoves, and similar devices serving to heat them in colder climes.
Cob homes require very little in regards to fossil fuel inputs for their construction or maintenance due to being made of local all-natural materials, and can be fashioned by hand. Cob homes have lasted for hundreds of years as they were built. Contrast this with the average stick-built home not lasting well past a hundred years that requires massive inputs of fossil fuel powered machines, lumber, plastics, and so on just to build and even more to maintain. Cob homes can be built multistory, and can be built with basements as well.
Now, cob will not be useful in every situation, or even most urban situations where the layout of a city has been in place for a significant investment of time and capital. The same issues with soil quality that makes the question of whether an urban garden is a good idea applies to the fashioning of a roof and walls. Even putting aside issues of quality of the soil, the particular requirements for a home in the city may be too small for cob to be effective. Wattle and daub, made in similar fashion to cob with thinner walls due to its wooden ‘skeleton’, may be another house construction method with a long-term future. As with cob, wattle and daub can be made by hand and with local materials. As with cob, it has the ability to scale up and down for different building sizes. Unlike stick-built methods which require sizeable sums of lumber input, wattle and daub requires small amounts of timber with no need for processing pieces. Where neither cob or wattle-and-daub methods make sense, retrofitting homes and places of busines can still make dramatic impacts on energy use, repair, and development of spaces for different uses.
We could be much closer emotionally and spiritually to the places we live and work if we made them by hand, scaled them to our needs, and oriented them to maximizing our liveability in them. If we generated power locally, took care of our water and soils with an understanding that everyone in the community is part of the environment, we could not help but understand ourselves as living with the world around us. Making our communities easier to live and work in, making them more sustainable and resilient to climate change, peak oil, and other predicaments facing us, will benefit us and our descendants.
Engaging locally means our ways of doing things are much more accesible and doable at this level. Rather than fight with entrenched interests at the State and national level, we can encourage positive development where we live. We have the opportunity to be living examples to our neighbors, and encourage the spread of ideas further by showing that the things we are passionate about can be done. In regards to our polytheist religions, we can show the living our our religions and the values by embodying them. So yes, we are going to face push-back and set-backs will happen. The clear challenge to us is not that we need to reinvent the wheel but to put it to effective use.
By taking up the challenge of engaging in good relationships with the land, air, water, buildings, and homes as polytheists, we allow for our future with each to be better. By engaging with the land, air, water, buildings, and homes with respect, with devotion to the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir of our urban, suburban, and rural areas, we develop better working relationships with each. By asking “How can we best honor the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir of this place?” with every decision, we are mindful of our place in things, and open ourselves to the work before us. As we let the work each place asks of us to develop these relationships, this teaches us how to better to do the work.
Both Kunstler and Fulton spoke about how their ‘relationship with the land and to the land fundamentally changed as urbanization dismantled peoples’ relationship to the land’. It took less than 100 years for us to hit this point in our relationship with the land and all that has been built on it, much of it through fossil fuels and overextending renewable living Beings like our waters, forests, and land. By engaging with the land, air, and water in this healthier, more wholistic way, we are given the opportunity to repair our relationship to and with them. In taking up the challenge of repairing our relationships with and to land, water, and air, we can each weave threads that fundamentally change the tapestry of our society’s relationships with them for the better. Wherever you can and however you are able, start weaving your threads. There are no insignificant threads to developing better relationships with our Holy Powers.
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.
On days like today I make prayers and offerings not only to the Sons and Daughters of Muspelheim, but the Sons and Daughters of Nifelheim. I smoke to the Gods, Ancestors, and spirits to keep me safe as I go to work. To keep me on the road. To keep me safe from harm. For the snow to be gentle with me, to work with my car. I smoke for my car, that it carries me well, and gets me safely to my destination.
This is where my metaphoric rubber meets the road. When I engage with the world I engage with the Gods, Ancestors, and spirits. There is no, can be no separation. If there was, then the cold Ice around me as I walk to my car would not touch me nor inspire equal worship to the Fire I cradle in my hand as I light my pipe when inside it. If there was truly separation the cold could not touch me in heart, or body, inspiring words that praise the pristine beauty and fierce bite, and the heat would not inspire words or prayer to praise the warmth in my hands or the small flame I put to tobacco to say my prayers. There can be no separation because the Gods, Ancestors, and spirits are all around me.
Yes, even in something so mundane as starting my car there are spirits: the spirit of my car, the spirits of all those that fill its tank, the spirit of Fire that makes the engine go, the spirits of Earth that form the car, the spirits of Water that lubricate the car, the spirits of animals whose bodies line the cars’ various innards, the tires themselves made from rubber with spirits of their own, the spirits of Ice that keep the car cool in the summer, and the spirits of Air that help to warm my car. There are Gods and spirits of roads and crossroads, local and large, great and small. There are Gods to pray to, to worship everywhere one turns, if one but pays the mind and chooses to. I could split myself into a million millions of me and still not have enough of me to pray to, offer to, worship all the spirits great and small that surround me. So, I do what I can. I light the tobacco after a prayer to It and Fire, and smoke and pray to all Who wish to hear to my words, praying to my Gods, Ancestors, and spirits, speaking to the breathing, living Jörð and all Who share this time and space with me upon Her. I pray to Odin, my Father, through His heiti Gangleri the Wanderer and Traveler to help keep me safe and keep me keen, first among the many Gods I will pray to quickly before I pull out of the drive.
There are the landvaettir all over, some I would call local Gods, such as the rivers that run near town, and Others that live in the heart of parks and Others that live with humans, landvaettir and housevaettir. There are spirits, vaettir, all around, and though I may not worship Them all (how could I, They are so many?) They all are due my respect as I pass through Their homes, territories, holy places. I pass what I view as a herme each and every day on the way to work; one of my neighbors has 3 large stones set one upon the other, and there is a spirit there that, when it catches my eye, I nod to in respect as I drive past it. The ground I walk on is full of life, covered in snow. The sky is alive with little spirits that twinkle in my headlights, some landing on my windshield, melting from the heat of my car.
There is no place I, or anyone can go where the spirits are not. I am truly blessed.
These pictures were taken back in 2012 when I moved back home. This was prior to my son and Sylverleaf coming to stay with us. At the time I lived in the basement, as the entire living arrangement had been changed since I moved out. I finally had a bit more room to make altars and shrines, and much of my parents’ resistance to such things in their home was gone. They recognized my need for space to set out devotional space for worship, and I will always be grateful to them for this.
I made an altar to the Gods, a shrine to the Ancestors, a shrine to the Earthvaettir combined with the Moneyvaettir and Warrior Dead, and a shrine to the Animal Spirits.
At this point in time my Gods’ Altar was still fairly squished, at least compared to how it is now. It is also a lot more simple; the Gods’ Altar as it is now has a lot more statuary and representations on it, whereas this was me trying to get back to some simplicity. For example, the Chaos Star got packed away, as at the time I felt I’d had more than what I had needed of that. The drum I made my journeys with was placed on the Gods’ Altar as I did a lot of journeywork to Their Realms at this point in time with Its help. There are two chalices on the altar here: the pewter one I dedicated to Freya as our relationship was going very well, and She was teaching me a lot at this time. That, and the chalice, which, if memory serves I had picked up at a thrift store, had at one point been given to someone as a Valentine’s gift back in 1985. I found not long after I started using this that anything placed in the chalice would degrade and mold quick, despite repeated cleanings. It has since been retired from service to any Gods since I can’t get it stop doing weird stuff to the contents within a few hours of being in the thing.
There’s also more prominence to the Valkyries’ representations here, with Brynhilde being directly behind Odin, and another to Her right. The blue vial to the left of the pewter chalice long contained the last of a Dansk Mjød Viking Blod that I eventually ended up offering that year. The crystal in front of the altar is selenite, a crystal I and my family still use to cleanse ourselves before some evening prayers. The Negative Confession is on this altar in front of the vial and pewter mug.
The Gods’ Altar 2012.
The left side of the Gods’ Altar.
The right side of the Gods’ Altar.
A closeup of Anpu (center), Mani, and Sunna (left) on the Gods’ Altar.
A closeup of Odin with Sigurd and Brynhilde behind Him on the Gods’ Altar.
A closeup of Freya (center), Brighid and Bres (left), Freyr (front center), and Jord/Nerthus’ representation (right) on the Gods’ Altar.
Left to right: Brighid and Bres, Freyr, Jord/Nerthus’s representation, Sunna, and Mani, closeup up before the statues of Odin and Freya.
The Ancestor Altar/Shrine had finally come into being. I had not been able to have a separate shrine for Them due to space issues, so being able to give space to the Elements as part of the Ancestors was wonderful as well as connective for me. With this came a sense of connecting not only with Them individually as Elements and Ancestors, but in the space of the altar/shrine itself, each Element having Their own space in the way it is laid out. This time also marked, roughly, when my Ancestors started asking for semi-regular tobacco offerings. I started doing smoking offerings in 2009, 2010. I had long held a taboo in my mind because of my parents’ smoking habits. The deal I made with Them was that, so long as I was not going to become addicted I would smoke for Them. So, cigars and cigarettes became part of the Fire area of the Ancestor shrine at this point, but that ended when Sylverleaf, our son, and I, transitioned as a family into the whole of the top floor of the house.
A long shot of the center of the Ancestor Altar/Shrine.
The center of the Ancestor Altar/Shrine.
Left side of the Ancestor Altar/Shrine. Leftmost is the Fire area, and next to it, the Water area.
Right side of the Ancestor Altar/Shrine. The Earth, represented by the bowl of stones, and Air, with the incense holder, are here.
This was the second shrine I had set up for the Earthvaettir and Moneyvaettir; Their previous places had been set into a bookcase on a whole shelf. I do not believe the Warrior Dead had a shrine before this, and if it had, it had been rather squished in between everything with the Earthvaettir and Moneyvaettir. Here, again, I felt a sense of being able to breathe, of expanding not only my physical limits, but practice. Of having space to actually physically acknowledge Their place in my life, Their Presences, and to honor that not only with space, but with prayer in that space. Of giving offerings to those beings, whereas once They may have been lumped all in together with a single offering chalice between all of these great, diverse Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir otherwise, now I had space and ability to honor each closer to Their own ways and desires.
The Earthvaettir, Moneyvaettir, and Warrior Dead shrines all on one surface.
It was relieving to finally have space to do this. I honor a great deal of animalvaettir not only as representations of the Gods (i.e. the snake as Bolverk), but as the animals Themselves who have come and shared wisdom and training. Some of these representations pull double-duty; for instance, the wolf in the top above the center of the shrine is representative of both wolves, and Lupa, the Wolf Goddess who came to me early in my journey as a Pagan and in my self-discovery, helped me to realize a lot about myself. More, She helped teach me how to not only explore it, but integrate it into my life as best as I could. As the Wolf has been a central figure in my life as a whole, and as I mark It as kin, it forms the center of this shrine. The patch of fur and wolf bones were gifts by the wonderful Shin Cynikos. I keep these as sacred items to this day. They still lay upon the animal spirits’ shrine.
The Animal Spirits Altar in 2012. It lay on an old steamer trunk a friend gave to me.
It wasn’t long before I transitioned out of this kind of layout. When I moved back into my old room upstairs to live with my family, there was a lot more room to expand, and express the changing relationships and growth in our lives together. The next post will go into the expansion that occurred at that time, and what the altars and shrines tend to look like nowadays.
Generosity in harvest | are repaid in poor seasons
for those who carefully share;
Oft is the giver | fondly remembered
and kindness gifted in kind
A bolt on the door | never once latched
Is either a boon or a waste;
The hearth fire cools | in the air of night
though many it once had warmed
No home shall last | nor village nor clan
who constantly wars with its own;
Crows gather close | for kin who oft fight,
and feast well on the flesh
Sarenth Odinsson 