A Story of Loss, Meaning, and Mutual Aid

TW: Loss of a pet, grief, working with a body, bodily functions

I don’t kid when I tell folks mutual aid can be some of the most frustrating and inconvenient things. A case in point:

Sometimes mutual aid is helping your neighbors bury their dog when you are sick as hell.

A week before and during the week of Thanksgiving I was sick with the flu. I’ve never been that sick with the flu before, save one time when I was a kid and was so bad off with the flu I was hallucinating. I took those two weeks off from work after having to visit the urgent care multiple times, and sometime after this story’s occurence, I ended up in the ER getting seen. It was a rough illness.

This takes place about halfway through this illness. I am knocked completely out because this flu has kicked my ass up one side and down the other. I get woken up by my partner, Streaking Fate. She tells me that our neighbor’s dog, about an eight month old black pitty mix puppy, got hit by a car. There is a car stopped that is just starting to pull away from our neighbor’s driveway. I found out later they did the right thing and spoke with our neighbor about what happened, and apologized.  So, having just been woken up out of a dead sleep with a flu bug that has completely leveled my ass, adrenaline starts pumping. I hauled over to check after throwing on some clothes, hoodie, leather gloves, and my winter coat. At this point I had no idea if the dog was alive, suffering, or not, so I brought some things along in case I could help their dog out to either get to the hospital or end its suffering.

First, I check on the dog, who is lying on the side of the street outside their driveway. The poor boy was a puppy, a pitty mix if memory serves, and very loving. A bit hyper, doofy, and really enjoyed breaking the rules and running around our yard, but generally a harmless pupper. All of the light is out of his eyes, and he is collapsed on the street, head to the side. I check him, speak his name a few times, and check his breathing and pulse. His eyes are glazed. There is nothing I can do for him.

I then check on my neighbors. They are a man and a woman about my age, not married yet though from what I gather they are working on that. I can see that she’s absolutely crushed, not only for herself, but for her boys and especially her partner, who loves that dog. I hug her for awhile and let her cry. Then, I ask her if there is anything I can do for her. She’s beside herself, and cannot bear to see her dog. I look to my partner who is sitting with their dog’s body. I know what I should do. I ask her if she wants me to take him, get him away from the street, and get him cleaned up in my garage. She agrees, I give her my number, and she lets me go to take care of him so she can break the news to her boys.

I come back and the poor guy has involuntarily vomited. Sometimes when we die, this happens. Sometimes we vomit, sometimes we shit,or both, because the muscles move in such a way on death that evacuation just occurs. So, we grab a tarp from my garage, and carefully put him on it, and bring him up to the garage as carefully as we can. His size belies how damned heavy he is. We get him in and put him on a large foldable clean plastic table.

We make prayers to our Gods of the Dead, to Anpu, to Hela, to Óðinn, and others. We make prayers to our Gods that are Wolves, Dogs, and other canids, including Anpu and Fenrisúlfr, and divine animals, including Hela’s hound Garmr, and Óðinn’s wolves Geri and Freki, among others. Then, after some cleansing breaths, we get to work on cleaning him.

He has pits of asphalt from the impact of the road, scratches, and bits of blood here and there. We clean out the pits and wipe away the blood on him with warm, wet terry cloths. Probably the hardest thing to work with is the vomit, because while we were bringing him inside, and I hauled him onto the table, his stomach continued to empty. To make him presentable for our neighbors, we keep cleaning him all over and especially inside his mouth. We use most of our terry towels over the course of an hour to an hour and a half. As we work we whisper prayers, and we speak with him.  We tell him what a good boy he is and was, and how much his people will miss him, and how much love they have for him. We speak with the Dead, cleaning him, so his Daddy doesn’t have to see him in the state we did. Over time the grime and grit, the blood, vomit, and all the rest come up. I take one of the white cloths that served as an altar cloth, and bring it outside. Streaking Fate puts it beneath him while I lift him up, and we wrap him in it, and wait for his Dad to come over.

It takes him some time to get home, to see his family, and to talk and process things. He calls, tells me he will be over soon. I ask if he needs anything to eat or drink. He can’t, so I just tell him to come over when he is ready to. When he comes over to the garage I can see him barely contain his emotions. I hug him, and can tell he’s a man not used to this, but I am, and I give him a soft squeeze on his shoulder and let him know his grief is welcome. I can see it in his eyes. As much as this puppy was loved by his family, this dog was his boy. He was a member of the family. He speaks to him as a son. For a few moments I watch him, watch as he drapes his hands over the coal-black fur in the most gentle way over his boy, and pet him, whispering words. I tell him to take as much time as he needs, and if he needs to warm up to come into the house. We leave him.

I take a seat in one of the chairs we have upstairs, and breathe long and hard, coughing hard because the flu is trying to make me expel my lungs. I blow my nose on one of my many handkerchiefs (thank you, Grandpa, they’ve definitely come in handy), and clean my hands with soap and water. A while later he knocks on the door from the garage. When my neighbor comes in he lets me know he needs to get some things from his home and to bring his truck around to take his puppy home. He asks if he can leave his boy with us for an hour or so, in order to get some things ready. He mentions wanting to bury him that evening, asking his boys to help him. Given what I saw of him and his family, I knew how hard that would be for them. I felt prompted by my heart and a small push by Óðinn to offer to help him bury his puppy.

He looks a mix of relieved and pained, and says he appreciates that and takes off. I rest with my partner for a while, and we get some dinner. A while later my neighbor gives me a call and it turns out he’s already made progress on his puppy’s grave in the backyard where he liked to be. He asks me for help in loading him into his truck bed. We only have one shovel, and I feel like I need to see this through. So, I grab my coats, gear up again, and help him put his puppy into the bed of his truck. Then, I get my shovel, and head over with him. The truck is warm, real warm, and he parks it with the high beams shining so we can see what we are doing. When we get out the cold kind of feels like it is trying to steal your breath.

We work together for about an hour to finish up the grave. We take turns with the older of his sons; the younger could not bear to be there. His partner watches but lets us work. He asks if I think the hole is deep enough. Considering I am around 5’7″ and having trouble getting into and out of it now, I say yes. So he, his son, and I bring his puppy to rest in our blanket and with his favorite blanket and a toy. Tears are stinging all of our eyes in the cold, but I blink them back, and breathe slow and deep. I get control. This is their time to grieve. I can process later. His Dad hops down into the grave, and asks to put him down into it himself.

I whisper some prayers into his puppy’s ear as I set him down into his Dad’s arms. The other two are openly crying. My neighbor is burying his face into his boy’s fur, speaking to him and finally, when he is ready, puts him down in the mound. I offer him my hand and he comes out of the grave. Then he says a prayer to his puppy, and offers space for the other two. When they say they’re good, we begin to bury him. It is quick work, between three guys shaping and digging with the cold spurring us on. We work it flat as we go, and finally, mound up the grave. When we are all finished he offers to drive me home.

He looks to me, and for another of the countless times that night, says thank you to me. I let him know that this what I was taught neighbors do for each other. This is what my parents taught me, and it is what my religion teaches me to do. When we get out of the car he shakes my hand and we embrace, and he tells me that if I ever need anything to let him know. I let him go and let him know if he ever needs anything I am here too.

This is what hospitality and mutual aid can look like. Sometimes it is sharing food. Sometimes it is defending your community from a common foe. Sometimes it is showing up to a protest or counterprotesting. Sometimes it is showing up when you are woken up from a deep sleep, dead on your feet from a flu, to help your neighbors on the worst day of their lives and bury a loved one. It may not be easy work but I can tell you, from the spirit of my neighbor’s dog to my neighbors themselves, it is good and sacred work. I didn’t show up in my peak condition. I showed up the best I was able. Really, in hospitality and mutual aid, that is all any of us can ask of ourselves or each other.

So, extend hospitality and mutual aid wherever you can however you are able. You may have no idea the impact just showing up can have for those who just need you to show up.

It is enough.

You are enough.

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.

Patreon Song/Poem/Prayer 21 -For Freya

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 Freya.

Seiðkona Who shakes in the throes of vaettir

Spákona Who hears the vaettir speak

Ginnregin Who embodies power

Whose mouth is full of blood

Whose hand hold the sacrificial knife

Whose spear is keen and wet

Whose sword is fierce and eager

Whose hair is braided for battle

Whose eyes pierce the foe

Whose wings cut the air

Whose words stir Urðr

Patreon Song/Poem/Prayer 11 -A Song for Grandmother Mugwort

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 by Maleck Odinsson.

Amma Una, Amma Una, Amma Una

Eldest of Herbs, Eldest of Plants, Eldest of Green Power

Amma Una, Amma Una, Amma Una

Cleansing, Empowering, Offering

Amma Una, Amma Una, Amma Una

Protecting, Healing, Knowing

Amma Una, Amma Una, Amma Una

Poison-killer, Blister-killer, Spirit-killer

Amma Una, Amma Una, Amma Una

Spirit Blesser, Spirit Empowerer, Spirit Enlivener

Amma Una, Amma Una, Amma Una

Gipt fá gipt, gipt fá gipt, gipt fá gipt

Amma Una, Amma Una, Amma Una

Þökk fyrir, Þökk fyrir, Þökk fyrir Amma Una

A Prayer of Praise to Holy Healers

Hail Mengloth, Jotun Goddess whose hands heal and wisdom preserves health of body, mind, and soul!

Who knows the ways to knit flesh and bone

Who knows the ways to bring vitality and vigor

Who teaches those who listen in the holy arts of healing!

Whose work staunches the blood of wounds

Who guards the lines of the heart so all is kept free from infection

Whose skillful hands knit the skin and flesh that every wound may become a scar

Whose wisdom of herbs and medicine makes every illness become renewed vigor

Thank You for blessing the doctors, nurses, techs, and healers with wisdom, skill, care, and prudence!

Hail Mengloth!  Ves ðu heil!

 

Hail O Eir, Aesir Goddess of the healing hands!

O Wise Goddess who teaches the eager to learn how to heal!

O Battle Medic whose hands have tended the flesh from the bite of wood, bone, bronze, iron, steel, and powder!

O Careful One who brings the healing teams together in purpose!

Thank You! You have blessed the doctors, the nurses, the techs, the healers with care, caution, wisdom and skillful work!

Hail Eir! Ves ðu heil!

 

Io Asklepios, Divine Physician!

Io to the Son of Apollon and Koronis!

Io Kheiron’s Son!

O Wielder of the Serpent-Staff

Whose hands have healed holy and mortal flesh alike

Whose lessons have instructed the countless lines of doctors, nurses, techs, and all those who heal

Whose work has saved the lives of countless people

Whose wisdom has been preserved that the work and art of healing has continued

At Whose side stands Telesphorus that health and recovery are one in healing

Thank You for blessing the doctors, nurses, techs, and staff with knowledge, skill, care, and wisdom!

Io Asklepios! Khairete!

 

O Imhotep, Divine Physician

Whose words and works have blessed the world

In whose hands and heart Thoth worked good blessings

In whose mind and heart was brilliance and its blessings shared with every doctor and physician, every surgeon and assistant

O Wise Teacher, thank You, for Your lessons and writings that taught all who followed and read of You how to heal!

O Divine Physician, thank You, for your skill has blessed the harmed and sick with health and vigor!

O Divine Surgeon, thank You, for Your skill has delivered life from death!

O Supreme Magician, thank you, for Your Words and Works yet give wisdom, yet give insight, yet strive out sickness, and yet heal!

Em Hotep, Dua, Dua Neter en-ek O Imhotep!

The #DoMagick Challenge Day 22

Ingwaz

Ingwaz (Wikimedia Commons)

Today I did galdr with Ingwaz.

Worked with earplugs again today.  They were fairly effective at helping me block out the outside world and concentrating fully on the work tonight.

A note: I know that the #DoMagick Challenge was to take place over the course of December, however, due to obligations to my family, Kindred, and getting hit for overtime at my job, I have been playing catch-up with my sleep.  So I will be finishing up the Challenge’s 30 days, just not on the same timetable as all the other folks.

In the first round of galdr I experienced sex.  The generations that grew from roots rooted in sex, then back, farther and farther back until it was no longer sex I was experiencing, but cell division.  It was going from what was familiar to the unfamiliar, from this generation and humanity on back through the lines until our beginning.  It was…odd.  Good, but odd.  I do not have words to adequately describe what going back in time and experiencing each stage of life was like, but suffice to say it was all-connective between ourselves and every thing once you go back far enough.

In the second round of galdr I was in a field.  Cows, or what were near to them, I think they could have been aurochs, were lazing in it.  This was just a feeling of utter peace.  No predators, no worry, no nothing but lazing in a field and relaxing.  When I began the next part of the galdr, they were being guided about the field.  They were being herded or moved around with.  Their waste fed the ground as they shredded the earth with their hooves, they ate the grasses, great big stalking things not like what we’re used to with these manicured lawns.  These were grasses.  They were wild.  As they were eaten many shed their seeds and spread, and the aurochs helped them along to propagate the next generation.  The last part of the galdr was  a huge shift.  Suddenly I was in a wholly different field, different grasses.  Smaller grasses, great furrows in the ground over which grew plants and grasses.  I saw a red flower with a black center, and heard from far off someone singing Flander’s Field.  The song and scene faded as I finished galdring.

In the last round of galdr I was in a special wood-roofed hut, the scent of blood all around.  The auroch’s neck was red, its body wedged into a pair of wooden beams formed into an X, tied tight to it.  My hand was covered in its blood, a long knife in my hand as I held it so it would not fall.  Then, the next galdr began and I and some others were butchering it in the hut, placing its parts onto wooden slats that were taken from us.  In the last galdr, there was a vessel of blood that had been beneath it taken, and its blood was sprinkled on a fire, on the people, on the Gods, which were present in the poles.  As I finished the galdr, it seemed to echo through me, and life was sprinkled on the field, the fire, the people, the Gods.  The land would be fertile.  I could see it.  The people would be too.  The Gods were pleased.  Then, I opened my eyes, and took deep breaths as I settled back into now-time.

I did my prayers of thanks to Rúnatýr and the Runevaettir.  I cleansed with the candle and prayed prayers of thanks to the Eldest Ancestor.

Link to the Daily Ritual for the Challenge.

#DoMagick

A Small Offering

I could hear the crows calling
The small cage was empty

The suet was all gone and the birds were hungry
So I laid out another offering

Peanuts for good growth and warmth in winter
A small offering that would save lives

Something shifted as I put the offering in
Shut the cage firmly and checked how it hung

It was acceptance
I hear you, landvaettir

The Hospital Dead

I feel the dead and the dying press around me
A pressure at first as soon as the doors part that builds
Each step bringing more
A throng of voices, shades walking down hallways
That no longer exist
Faces contort, bodies shuffle

What is left behind is rasping breath
Pained heartbroken moments
Loneliness

It does not take long to peel back layers
To see why these ones stayed
Most aren’t lost; they’re forgotten

They cannot understand why they never came back
Why they never came
I hear their lamentations

No one has come to grieve them, none to miss them
No one to lay down prayers or a flower
No one to say “Farewell”

In every hospital the Dead stay
So many unmourned, so many bound
Laying and shuffling in every floor

There are no wasted prayers;
Lay down a flower

There are no wasted prayers;
Lay down a coin

There are no wasted prayers;
Lay down a drink

There are no wasted prayers;
Lay down a plate of food

There are no wasted prayers;
Lay down a song

There are no wasted prayers;
Lay down your tears

Do not ask “Do They deserve it?”
They are Dead
I lay down these lines
The pressure eases
Because someone remembers Them

I whisper prayers in a silent hall
The pressure eases
Because someone speaks to Them

I pour down an offering
The pressure eases
Because someone has slaked Their thirst

I lay down an offering
The pressure eases
Because someone has fed Their hunger

They do not leave
But each may do their part
To remember and honor the Dead