People think of trees as something you climb, and then you get to the top, and then you win. Once upon a time Odin thought that – he climbed the tree and he put his little country club as high atop it as he could and he built a chair where he could see everything below him and he thought that made him awesome.
Eventually he realized that he was not awesome. Odin took the shortcut down, and he had a noose to break his fall…
I’ve written about my own personal World Tree before, but not much on Yggdrasil herself even though I’ve been working with her for months. The truth is, it’s difficult work. It’s mostly internal, and it’s just not very interesting to describe. If you’re familiar with Tolkien, imagine having a conversation with an Ent about just about anything that’s full of fiddly little details.
Imagine having this conversation if you’re a little deficit of attention to start with. This is hard for me, and in a way that I worry sounds kind of pathetic when I try to talk about it.
It’s different from talking to her inhabitants. Vidopnir sits at the top of the tree, and Nidhogg at the base, they’re equals. Their idea of time is far beyond mine as a human. But Yggdrasil’s is beyond even theirs, beyond the fights between Aesir and jornar or between the various worlds on her branches.
I keep coming around even though I don’t know that I stand a chance of understanding it. Maybe it’s worth doing anyway.
It would be rude to stomp around the top of the Tree without talking to the tree herself, I’m pretty sure, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time with Yggdrasil herself along with Vidopnir. She’s not precisely chatty being, you know, a tree. But she’s more than just a symbol, too.
So the whole point of dragon/phoenix work is a kind of ascension. Not strictly in the sense of going up, because obviously serpents like to hang out underground and all, but becoming more than you started out as. But in terms of unfolding the origami, in terms of getting where we want to go, she can walk us through the path. (I think this is probably the same thing one tries to achieve by working with a Holy Guardian Angel or doing the Headless Rite.)
It’s not just a pretty metaphor to say that the eagle sits at the top of the tree and the serpent sits below. She is an essential part of the work, and an active one, if you let her be. She’s the tree of lives, connecting the worlds, passing out fruit (apples, peaches, pomegranates). And the overlapping energywork… the sephiroth (there’s one pair), interpretation of the chakra (there’s another pair) are expressions of related things. (That takes me back to rainbowland and to some of the shit I was doing in college…)
The phoenix burns itself. The work is internal destruction, rebuilding the self. Nidhogg chews on her roots. The dragon’s work is external – tear down the established order, lay the groundwork for the new.
Of course they’re in opposition – and there’s no shortage of stories about the opposition of thunder and scale, really – and she, the Tree, she is the liminal space between inner and outer self as much as she’s the liminal space between worlds. She is the one who connects the dragon and the phoenix, the serpent and the eagle, the inner and the outer worlds.
Peace between within and without isn’t easy. But it’s necessary if you’re going to get beyond the Tree. She is patience, and she is stability. She’ll outlast her inhabitants, I don’t doubt, even if things look pretty bad right now.
She asks for sacrifice. She wants to know that those she teaches are serious, are willing to put the work in. I think that’s fair. She demands honesty with myself, with my partner, with my life. That’s intimidating, too.
She sees everything. Her roots rest in Mimir’s well. She shelters the Norns. Gaining her wisdom means accepting that some things cannot be changed. I look at Odin, who knew exactly what was going to happen to his son. Did he think it was worth it? Did it matter?
I guess it depends on whether I believe wyrd is malleable or not. If it’s not, then the choice is simply between the illusion of freedom or knowledge. If it is, then choosing not to accept it is a valid choice.
She teaches me that it’s okay to be tamed. This is a lesson I fought for a long time, but it’s very relevant to my life now.
Žemyna (Photo credit: Aurelijus Valeiša)
Latvian mythology has a great many “mãte,” or mothers, referred to in folklore. Little is known about any of them, and there’s speculation in the academic sources as to what they are and whether they are each separate goddesses, whether they’re all titles for a single goddess, or if there’s something else altogether going on. I have wondered if many of the mãte referred in the lore may be localized goddesses or very powerful wights, in which case it wouldn’t be surprising at all that I got nothing but crickets when I reached out to them.
Zemes-mãte in particular is the Earth-mother. In an effort to figure out what was going on with these mãte, I spent some time trying to reach out to her with candles and meditation, but I got no indication that they’re separate. When I called to Zemes-mãte, I got Mara, so I go with that.
Žemyna is a Lithuanian earth goddess and mother goddess, and I’ve seen her listed as equivalent to Zemes-mãte. Mat Zemlya is a Slavic goddess, also known as a mother-earth. She, in turn, is syncretized with or has as a handmaiden the goddess Mokosh, who is a goddess of spinning, childbirth and destiny and associated with Laima… or Mara.
Syncretization is not something I do lightly, but in this case, all of my research points to them being the same goddess known to different peoples. My UPG, based on my own efforts in reaching out and what Mara has indicated to me, falls the same way.
There can be a great many differing opinions when it comes to the subject of synchronization between deities. It’s honestly not something I do lightly; I started out expecting the Earth Mother to be a different deity from Mara. I’ve been all but sent a registered letter telling me I was wrong about that, so I go with what I’ve been told.
If I had to nominate an author capable of creating a god, it would be Neil Gaiman, and I don’t just say that because I’ve worked with the Endless. In American Gods, Gaiman included the Slavic goddesses referred to as the Zorya. He listed three sisters, the Evening Star, the Morning Star, and the Midnight Star.
It’s that Midnight Star, Zorya Polunochnaya, that I find most fascinating. Not that her sisters are not lovely ladies in their own right, but that, before American Gods, she didn’t exist, and now it’s nearly impossible to do any real research on the Zorya without encountering her.
Now, there’s every indication that she exists. Polunocnica, the Lady Midnight, turns up if you do research. She’s generally paired with the Lady Midday, Pscipolnitsa, and not the Zorya. The Lady Midnight and the Midnight Star, while they have obvious similarities, are not the same lady.
And yet I’ve met the Midnight Star.
I couldn’t tell you if she was another form of Poluocnica or if she existed independently. But she is as real as her sisters, and I’ve danced with her in the starlight.
Sometimes I enjoy theorizing about what this sort of thing means. Gods and powers, names and honors, egregores and tulpas. In practice, though, does it matter? The lady answers to the name Zorya Polunochnaya. That’s good enough for me.
There are many Hunts, and they vary almost as much as do their Riders. Some rode for vengeance and some for justice, some ran from the gates of Hell itself, some rode searching for a Heaven that would never be found on the roads they were on. Some rode the horses they’d ridden in life, or strange, dark beasts that nonetheless acquiesced to be carry them, or themselves took the form of wolves or giant cats or other predators. I was not the first to choose a motorcycle, with a headlamp streaming through the twilight, but the image stuck to me.
When I took point, berserker and valkyrie alike in my wake followed suit. No hounds or howls announced our arrival, only the low thunder of perfectly-tuned engines. We’re still a motley crew, riding everything from crotch rockets to cruisers to naked bikes. More often than not, mine is a 1934 Indian. It doesn’t really matter; they run on whetstone sparks and shining wet teeth and gunpowder and fear, not petrol.
Some years are better than others. Some years the picking is ripe and there’s no second thoughts, no bitter taste in the blood of our prey. Some years are strange and the prey sickly-twisted. Some years virtually all we hunt are humans, and some years almost none.
The Hunt is never clean.
No matter how insubstantial the riders, no matter how little is left behind when the Hunt continues from one target to the next, it’s not a clean job. Viscera sticks more in the darkness of the Mists than it does on the battlefield, and the smell… well, when your targets are already rotten inside, there’s little to be done about the disgustingly sweet scents we tracked, each one a unique blend of dying flowers and burnt sugar and greenish meat.
Some of them were human, some of them monster, but all of them were messy.
I would tell you not to bother running if you’re prey, but it doesn’t matter.
Please, do run.
It’s more fun.
I’ve talked about Odin and Loki before. How I’ve known them since I was small. How they gave me my earliest lessons in magic.
I call them Dad and Mom, respectively. I’m sure there are people who would find that disrespectful; I don’t really care. Odin and Loki have never complained, and they’re the ones who have the most right to.
What does that mean? It means I still turn to Odin when things are painful. I don’t expect him to make it go away – he wouldn’t. But he helps me figure out what I should be doing.
It means I turn to Loki when I can’t stand being misgendered anymore, and when I know myself to be as much a monster as any of his children, and I find enough comfort to know that the problem is our society’s refusal to understand monsters. (Children, of course, have no trouble with monsters. It’s adults who fear us.)
I’ve been thinking about the Two Man Con in relation to my shifting understanding of the Gods and Powers. In relation to Odin in particular, it’s… well, Odin’s a timey-wimey kind of guy. He’s got dozens of names for different faces and places, enough that I’ve wondered in the past if I was even working with the same guy the Asatruar talk about.
I’m pretty sure the answer is “yes and no” because that’s always the answer with Odin.
I was all set to do some meditation, to “really learn” what the Two Man Con, the manifestations of Fire and Air, looked like in my worlds and in my earliest practice. But the thing is… they look a lot like Odin and Loki, no matter what I do. Name-shifted variants that are very much still Odin and Loki as I know them are the manifestations of Fire and Air in one of my stories.
Every time I think I’m making progress with this tangle, I pull on an end and the whole thing tightens up again. Not unsurprising where those two are concerned, I suppose. Maybe I should fall back on calling them Wodinaz and Wehaz – though that’s a whole different argument with heathens, isn’t it? Too lore, or maybe not enough lore, or not the right lore. I’ve always been certain that Vé/Lóðurr was Loki, again, without much academia to back it up. It’s just a thing that’s true for me.
(My favorite lore is Diana Wynne Jones’ Eight Days of Luke, for the record. She made Kid Loki cool way before Marvel did.)
This is turning out to be much more complicated than I had in mind, but I suppose if they’re there, they’re there, and ignoring them for the sake of “making something up” is not going to solve anything in the long run.
Rán is the Norse goddess of the sea. She is most often listed simply as the wife of Aegir and mother of the nine wave-maidens, but like most women, she is more than simply wife and mother.
Even more than Aegir, Rán is the deity that needed to be placated to make a safe crossing. You might pray to Njord to protect your ship and your livelihood, you might pray to Aegir that his eye pass over your ship, but it was Rán you yelled to when things looked desperate. Many soliders carried bits of gold to throw overboard during a bad storm, in the hopes of placating her, or to offer to her when they had drowned to earn her favor.
Rán’s name means “ravager” with connotations of plundering or taking. When she calls a storm and readies her golden net, she has her heart set on bringing sailors down into the hall she shares with Aegir under the sea. Some people say that she simply offers succor to those who drown, gently catching them in her net, but this doesn’t seem to be what the lore points to. In the Prose Edda, Snorri refers to “The wave, with red stain running/Out of white Rán’s mouth.” This is not the image of the gentle goddess waiting patiently for poor drowning victims to come to her.
Aegir and Rán’s hall is an afterlife destination as surely as Valhalla and Helheim are to the Norse. Whether the dead stay there or move on when Rán tires of them is impossible to say.
Of Ran’s lineage, I’ve been able to find little documentation. Some modern sources describe her as being of jotun blood like her husband, and occassionally as his sister. Others describe her as Vanir and consider Aegir to be Vanir by marriage.
endless ribbons of blacktop, concrete, tar, cobbles, dirt from the backroads stretching out through endless summer afternoons to the interstate highways and the millions they carry. the roads mean freedom they mean dependence on oil cities have lived and died by the word of the highway planner you give and you take you carry your own magic hitchhiking ghosts forgotten freeways the crossroad and the cloverleaf are your sacred places hail, Mother of Roads! hail, Cela Mate!
Juras Mate is the Mother of the Sea and is one of the better known mothers. I see her as largely equivalent to the Lithuanian Jurate; both names come from the word for ocean and sea. She also reminds me a bit of Ran in Norse myth.
the fish were caught up in nets, fighting and twisting but unable to free themselves and left dangling. your heart, too, was caught up in his nets, but it was you who caught the fisherman, carrying him away to your palace of amber. in the end it was your happiness caught up in the net of Perun’s rage, dragged from the sea and gutted. O great Mother of the Sea, watch over those whose relationships are judged and found unpopular! Guide and protect those who love without regard for acceptability! Hail, Juras Mate! Hail, Jurate! Hail, Mother of the Oceans and Waves!
Typically of my life, as soon as I declare my intent to do something, something comes along to test that. (I blame Loki. Mom always calls me on my shit.) What did I find myself complaining about not an hour after I posted that piece about Writing the Change? The way people reference Jormungandr.
Everything I come across relating to the Serpent seems to be extreme – hir silence is described as “autistic” or sie stands ready for Ragnarok or sie’s just a big cuddly snake or… My experience is not quite any of those things. I see hir as quite the denizen of the middle path, as opposed to most extremes.
Sie can use words to communicate, but largely chooses not to. Images and feelings can be faster, but they’re not always the most effective if you want the other person to figure it out for themselves. Sie does reach out sometimes, when sie’s directly addressed or there is something sie feels needs to be said and no one else has done it. Sometimes people catch hir eye, metaphorically speaking, though I think humans do have a harder time making that connection. Sie’s not interested in collecting people the way, say, Loki is.
In the way of many of those who come from the Ironwoods, sie is what we might call genderqueer. That word has implications the jotnar don’t need, not being a society that particularly ascribes to a hard gender binary, but the Serpent can be male or female as it suits, or hermaphroditic, or agender. (In general I find English really limiting for the discussion of gender in jotnar society because a lot of our assumptions and hang ups are built right into the language.) Suffice to say that sie is whatever sie damn well pleases.
While all three of Angrboda’s children by Loki were betrayed by Odin, I think hir situation is somewhere between hir brother and hir sister. Hel was bound to Helheim and rules there, which… doesn’t seem so much a punishment as Odin taking credit for something that was going to happen anyway. I suspect Odin thought the Wolf could be bound to protect Asgard as the Serpent does Midgard, but, well, Odin doesn’t like it when things get away from him.
And the Serpent, well, my understanding is that hir position isn’t strictly a punishment, but sie is still bound to Midgard and obligated to look after it and protect it as best sie can. How much of that was put upon hir by Odin and how much sie took on willingly seems complicated, and not nearly so simple as Odin tells it. But that’s Ol’ Blue Eye for you – the stories he tells of his work serve just as much a purpose as the work itself.
https://jackwren.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/the-wheel-2/
by Eliphas Levi
I cast the cards, I draw the Wheel of Fortune. You stand behind it, holding it, watching it turn, turning it. You hold the seasons and drown to bring the spring in. You turn the seasons and bury your brother with the harvest. All of these things live within the spokes of the wheel, in our lives and in yours. Sometimes the candle burns black, sometimes bright and healthy. I see you at the farmer’s market and at my yearly check-up, in the class schedule and the festival season. I know the wheel cannot always turn in my favor, but I ask you: turn back the worst, cushion my fall, let the bad times pass quickly, let the good times linger. May I never forget my luck or my blessings, may I appreciate the water that flows over the wheel and your hands at my back.
It’s dark between the worlds, and cold in the way of spring days that trick you into leaving the house without a jacket. Most times when I arrive somewhere takes my eyes a minute to adjust to having things to focus on but Muspellheim is a whole other matter. There’s little to it that isn’t brightness, and no matter how I brace for it, it still boils over me. At first I thought of it like walking out of an air-conditioned desert building into the 118F degree heat, and the way it makes you feel immediately as if your skin has toasted, but at one point it also brought back a very visceral memory of waking up to a house fire when I was a teenager and that stuck too. I tend to parse the astral in terms of memories that evoke specific feelings, rather than getting a lot of visuals.
Surt and Sinmora are fire jotnar in Norse mythology. Surt is named in both the Poetic and Prose Eddas, usually in the context of rolling up to Asgard at Ragnarok with the sons of Muspell and taking out Freyr, but he is one of the oldest beings in the nine worlds. Sinmara is named largely without reference to Surt except for a late addition, and so while there is both academic and personal gnosis-derived arguments that they are spouses, my experience says it is likely. On the NTP shrine to Surt, it is suggested that the two might be a single being:
“Some say that she is actually Surt in female form, and that if you meet them, only one will speak to you at a time because they are actually magically the same being. Others say that Surt split himself in two in order to birth the race of fire giants.”
My experience of Surt and Sinmora is that they are rather like twins who happen to be husband and wife, and yet like a single intelligence that chooses to manifest itself in two forms. If you don’t have any reason to look past the way they present themselves, it’s certainly possible to treat them like two separate beings and be in no way offensive. If you find the more theoretical stuff headache-inducing, there’s no reason you can’t just think of them as husband and wife and leave it at that.
Dividing seems to be very common, both in mythology and in nature. (That’s where life starts, after all, with cells dividing.) Without division, whether metaphorical or literal, it’s very hard to comprehend yourself. The ability to step outside of your own head, a universe that is by definition focused on you, and see yourself as other people see you and put yourself in their position, is essential to development and emotional growth. A mirror is not a perfect reflection, but in the attempt to create a mirror or a portrait, to separate and capture a part of ourselves, is a way to know yourself better in relation to that reflection. Surt and Sinmora are one being and two at the same time, because understanding requires being able to see yourself, and completion requires being able to integrate what you’ve seen into your self-concept, and this is as true for elemental forces as it is for mortals.
https://jackwren.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/t-is-for-tianhou/
(You just imagined the “U” post that was here earlier. Because I totally know how the alphabet works.)
If I really wanted to bore you guys, I’d show you the paper I wrote in college about the Chinese concept of t’ien. It’s actually fascinating stuff, but I’m not sure I did it justice and also it was like ten pages long, which nobody has patience for.
#3681 Mazu (媽祖), Taoist sea goddess (Photo credit: Nemo’s great uncle)
So instead I’m gonna talk about Tianhou. Before I met Ran, Tianhou was the ocean goddess who spoke to me, and boy are there not two more different Ladies of the Waters you could think of. One’s known for rescuing the drowning, and the other’s known for being the one doing the drowning!
The woman who would become the goddess Tianhou was born into a pious, working-class family in southern China around the year 960 AD. It is rumored that her parents, desiring a daughter, prayed to Guan Yin, who rewarded their devotion with a magic pill to allow them to conceive her. As a child, she never cried, earning the name Li Moniang, “mute maiden.” Li was a kind and well-behaved child who did her chores, collected herbs for her mother, and studied religious texts. When she was a young teen, her piety sufficiently impressed a spirit in the woods that he stopped her and gave her a magic charm that allowed her to travel out of her body.
This charm is actually related to the best-known story of Tianhou. Once, her father and brothers went out to fish while she sat at home weaving with her mother. A violent storm blew up and her father and brothers were torn from their boat. Li left her body the moment she became aware of the danger to them, and her spirit quickly travelled over the waters to rescue them from the sea. She carried one brother under each arm and her father in her mouth, toward the shore. However, Li’s mother came in and, seeing her daughter apparently dead, rushed over to her and began to weep. Li, not wanting her mother to suffer, made a small sound to let her mother know she was alive – but had to open her mouth to do so, and unfortunately dropped her father into the sea.
Li died very young, between the ages of twenty and twenty eight, for reasons unknown. Some stories tell that she returned to the sea to search for her father’s body and subsequently drowned. It has also been suggested that she died from illness as a result of eating too strict of a Buddhist diet. At her death, she was reported to ascend to Heaven on a cloud.
After her death, there were many stories of her helping people. She is credited with subduing dragons, floods and droughts, as well as protecting people from disease and plague. In some cases she is said to protect soldiers and government officials from bandits, but there are also stories of her protecting the common man (and even pirates and smugglers) from corrupt officials and cruel soldiers. Because of the many stories showing her power over water, Tianhou is worshipped by sailors and pirates as well as those who depend on them.
Tianhou is one of the most popular deities in China, and her popularity is particularly notable in Taiwan. She is viewed as a motherly figure despite her virginity at death, and is often called “Ah-ma” or “Mazu” or “Mazupo,” names which mean mother or grandmother in the languages where she is worshipped. During World War II, Taiwan was occupied by Japan and thus came under heavy Allied fire. There are numerous stories of Tianhou protecting civilians during the war, using her heavenly robes to deflect bombs and save homes and temples.
Tyr is portrayed and perceived as an upright, principled god, often to the point of rigidity, but when I think about the binding of Fenris I find that he actually behaved like a trickster. He paid dearly for his actions (as he knew he would, and was willing to, to protect his community) both in physical loss and, in my interpretation, grief, because he brought fenris up so would have had a very strong bond with him.
I definitely agree with your interpretation that it was something Tyr did with difficulty because of his role in raising Fenris. I've run into people who think of Tyr raising Fenris as being akin to having a dog that you have to eventually take out back like this is a middle grade novel, but my experience is that all of Loki's children are fully sapient. More specifically, my UPG is that Odin brought Fenris to Asgard to raise him to protect that realm the way he set Jormungandr to protect Midgard; Fenris was in a kind of court hostage position for as long as Tyr could protect him, and Tyr was in more of an adoptive parent position than a pet owner.
Fenris was trusting enough of all - or at least enough - of the denizens of Asgard that he didn't suspect anything was wrong with the "game" at first. It was only the lightness of the final bonds that spooked him, and caused him to demand a show that this game was done in good faith
And while he told Fenris the truth “if this binds you you can bite my hand off” it was such a truth that Fenris didn't believe it, because what warrior would willingly give up his sword arm, his oath arm?
It may depend on the version of the story you're looking at, but it's my understanding that Fenris asked that someone offer their hand, not that Tyr offered it of his own will.
So Tyr didn't come up with the oath so much as he was the only one with the balls to stand up and actually take Fenris up on it. For all I know, he didn't like that the Aesir were playing this game with Fenris at all, he wanted to find some other solution to the wolfchild's great strength, but in that moment, he didn't think there was a choice left. If nobody was willing to offer, Fenris would know they were using tricksy magic to bind him for real instead of just playing around, and there was no telling what would happen then. There was no way to back out of it at that point. Somebody had to step up to protect the Aesir from their own plan falling apart at the last minute, and in that moment, Tyr saw that the only one who could protect them was him, so he stepped up, because he was the chief and he was responsibly for their safety and so that's what a good chief does.
That, in my opinion, is Tyr's great demonstration of honor. He was willing to hurt one he loved and sacrifice his own honor and position to protect his people.
Telling the truth but telling it in such a way that it will be not believed or it will be interpreted wrong is an inveterate trickster move, and while it meant that Tyr didn't actually lie, or break an oath, he wasn't behaving with honour towards Fenris. (But he was behaving with honour toward the rest of his community so maybe there are different levels of honour?) And it seems to me its often the "job" of tricksters to maintain kinds of balance, which is what Tyr was doing here
There are often times when one's obligations, honor or oaths are in conflict. Finding the best way to navigate that, trying to serve as many people or as well as you can, isn't inherently a trickster role
Tyr and I have a solid but not particularly close relationship and I often get the feeling of justice and balance being upheld “by any means necessary?” But is it justice in that case?
I would probably be willing to concede balance, but no, I don't see how it's justice. Fenris is what he is, the product of his parentage and his upbringing. The binding is not "justice" for Fenris, certainly, and no one else is in a position to be the recipient of "justice" here.
or maybe it’s acceptable to behave dishonourably to protect you and yours, your community, to keep people safe. as long as, and I think this is really important, you are willing to pay the price and accept the consequences?
Because I tend toward the theory that Tyr was the leader of the Aesir before Odin, and I see this as a tipping point where Tyr takes (or gives in to) Odin's side of the argument - that it's fair to break an oath if you're willing to accept the consequences - I do think Tyr's behavior is "acceptable" here in the sense where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Tyr took a great deal of sacrifice onto himself when he put his hand in Fenris's mouth. (Not just the arm, but also where he no longer can lead Asgard, as both a public oathbreaker and one who has been disfigured for his action. He sacrificed a great deal more than his hand in my UPG.)
And yes, you could technically argue Tyr did not break the oath because Fenris did bite off his hand, but he put his hand in there as a pledge that the binding was done in good faith - he simply accepted the consequence of breaking it. But more than that, he betrayed the wolfchild he raised by letting him be put in that position, and that is a kind of oath too.
That's the reason I, personally, bristle at that story - I understand the need to protect the community, but I'm more of a Loki type (you touch my kids and I plot the death of your entire pantheon). So I have a hard time imagining making the choice Tyr made.
https://jackwren.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/v-is-for-veles-and-victory/
So speaking of talking about UPG for PBP…
I’ve only written about Veles briefly on here, but I can’t let ‘V’ go by without saying something. Veles, if you don’t know, is a Slavic deity with a pretty interesting portfolio. He’s most notable as the opposite number of the Slavic thunder god Perun. Pretty much every Indo-European pantheon has one of these pairs, a thunder god and an underworld serpent god that battle.
My original draw to Veles was actually an outgrowth of my interest in the Norse pantheon – comparing Thor and Perun led me naturally to compare Jormungand and Veles. Since there’s very little on Jormungand in the lore, I was drawn to Veles instead; it was much easier to form a relationship with him.
Plenty of people are use the term “squishy polytheism” lately, and this is one area where squishiness comes into play for me. I definitely see Veles and Jormungand as different beings who come from the same source.
Veles’s battle with Perun is one with a foregone conclusion. Every year, Perun sends him back under the earth. It’s one of those myths that makes you stop and think about “myth as metaphor” vs “literal myth”. There’s no good reason to keep doing the same thing when you lose every year, after all, so there’s got to be something more going on there.
The victory or loss is not really the point, as far as I can tell. Whether the cycle is yearly or comes around once every Ragnarok, it’s a reminder that destruction is necessary for creation. Defeat for the serpent isn’t really defeat, and the serpent is victorious just as often as the thunder is. The difference is that we only celebrate the thunderer’s victory.
https://jackwren.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/v-is-for-vidopnir-and-the-view-from-up-here/
Caption reads "The Ash Yggdrasil". T...
Caption reads “The Ash Yggdrasil”. The world tree Yggdrasil and some of its inhabitants. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Is it fair to break out so much original research/UPG for a Pagan Blog Project post? I don’t know but I’m leaning towards yes. Besides, how many people are still reading and blogging it this late in the year? We are the few, the proud, the obsessively dedicated…
Anyway.
The eagle that lives atop Yggdrasil is never named in the lore.
And yet there’s a similar story about Mimameid, a tree named for Mimir (in the same way Yggdrasil is named for Odin), with a rooster at the top named Vidopnir. There are some academics who’ve suggested that Mimameid and Yggdrasil are both names for the same World Tree.
Why, you may ask, is this tagged ‘firebird’? To start with, the eagle is one of the species of bird associated with various firebird legends. The rooster is too, though admittedly through a more circuitous route. Through both my own and other peoples’ UPG, eagles in the Northern lore are linked to lightning, and thence to the thunderbird/firebird. (I don’t think the two concepts are identical, but I feel they’re close enough for vague theorizing.)
I set out to work with Vidopnir because I was curious. I like finding firebirds and seeing what they are willing to teach me.
At it turned out, working with Vidopnir also meant working with Yggdrasil. As you might imagine, being the Guy At the Top of the Tree, Vidopnir’s pretty into the big picture. He and I talked about goals, and what’s important, and where I’ve been wasting my energy.
I think of Vidopnir as the firebird of the controlled burn, with the perspective to see what’s really going on behind the scenes.
If anyone else has experience with him, I’d love to hear about it.
I remember being nineteen, standing with my then-best friend in the dark of a glass campus walkway on a new moon night, looking at our reflections and seeing someone else in mine. It was terrifying but also exciting, proof to my mind that this was real and that I wasn’t wasting my time on other realms and the supernatural. I used to do a lot of stupid magical things to get that thrill of realness, to see if I could and to see what would happen.
It’s not that I would recommend that kind of reckless thrillseeking to somebody new to magic; actions have consequences, and yes, some of them I’m still living with. But I used to take risks, all kinds of risks, considered risks and desperate risks and insane risks. I’m not sure when that changed.
I mean, a few years ago I quit my job and my significant other and I sold everything we couldn’t fit in the car and moved to the Pacific Northwest with no plan. It worked out, obviously. But since then, perhaps because of the OCD and the anxiety, I’ve struggled with even reasonable risks.
“What do you want from me?” I ask Hekate.
“Magic,” she says.
And I don’t know how to answer that. You’d think it would be easy, given how much stupid magical shit I’ve done, but somewhere along the way I lost my confidence. Everything I do feels empty, and that emptiness isn’t suited to magic. In the thin dark of Walpurgisnacht I confess my emptiness.
I have made progress. Asking for Mars’s energy has inspired discipline. I’ve meditated, written, made progress on chores. But the emptiness only recedes temporarily, because whatever I am given seems always on the verge of slipping away. When I close my eyes I feel the ragged edges of a hole in my chest. I’m not sure what it is, whether it’s depression or an energy body issue or just my nature. At one point I thought maybe the cancer was a product or a representation, and the double mastectomy would remove it or something, but you can’t remove a hole. You can only patch it or fill it, and if you don’t tend to it, your bucket drains away no matter what you do.
I suppose that leaves two choices. I can find a way to patch the bucket, and look to be refilled, or I can accept that an empty bucket is still full, just of something else entirely.
It hurts to look at myself when I am empty and self-destructive and desperate for that realness, especially since I’m not nineteen anymore and I have people who rely on me. But I’m not doing them a whole lot of good the way I am right now anyway, and I can push myself and work with that emptiness without doing things that only sound like a good idea if you want to be a protagonist in a horror novel.
Sometimes the Dark comes with a warm blanket, and sometimes she comes with stompy boots. I need stompy boots, and strong hands that don’t let me flinch away from the mirror. I hate looking at myself, but I have to see myself. Since last fall, really, I’ve been treading water. I spent March caught in a riptide, and April giving in to drowning grief.
I’m tired. I’m ready to crawl onto the shore and let the seawater drain away and confront the emptiness. To find fullness in the void, if that’s what it takes. If I’m going to be thrown into the fucking abyss, I might as well cross it, right? There’s no point in going back to the other side of the sea. Hekate is known as a guide in dark places. I used to know how to trust the Dark. I don’t know when I forgot that.
Teach me, Lady. Teach me, Lady. Teach me, Lady.
https://jackwren.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/x-is-for-xuan-nu/
Her full title is usually said to be Dark/Mysterious Lady of the Nine Heavens. She studied at the feet of the Queen Mother of the West, Hsi Wang-mu.
During the battle between Huang Di and Chi You, it is said that Xuan Nu came to Huang Di, either with her sisters or alone, and taught him many kinds of magic, writing, and scholarship, which he then passed on to humanity. Notably, some of this teaching was said to happen in the bedroom, and is sometimes cited as the basis for sexual alchemy in Taoism.
Xuan Nu is one of the goddesses I approached in the search for a name for my Dark Lady, and overall she was probably the Lady I worked with who was the closest match. She’s extremely knowledgeable, one of the most widely studied gods I’ve had the pleasure of working with.
My experience of her was that she could be quite demanding of her students (though I think that’s understandable) and I would no recommend approaching her lightly. She will push you further than you think you can go. Sometimes that’s a necessary thing.
I figure everybody’s going to be doing Kuan Yin today, so I decided to pick a different Chinese god! I’m such a fucking hipster.
A stellar example of the Chinese belief that anyone could rise to the highest ranks on talent alone, Kuan Yu began life as a simple young man named Zhang who studied, memorized his Confucius, and sold bean curd to support his family. He was a real person and lived from 162 to 220 CE. He was a bit of a troublemaker, however, and his family tried to control him by locking him in his room.
Like any good troublemaker, Zhang broke out and ran away. While he was leaving, he heard wailing and crying and went to investigate. As it turned out, a young lady and her father were being harassed by a government official who was trying to press the lady into marrying someone she didn’t like. He killed the official (shouldn’t everyone who has to deal with corrupt government bureaucracy be so lucky?) and fled prosecution. While he was being pursued, he stopped and looked in a stream. His face had been colored bright red! This caused the pursuers to let him go, since obviously this red-faced guy wasn’t the one who had killed their official.
It was about this time that he changed his name to Kuan or Guan and that’s when the real fun started. Seeing the corruption in the government, Kuan went to join an army defending the true government from the false influences. (This would be the story related in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.) There he met two men he would forever be linked to, and the three of them swore an oath to be as brothers.
Lots of fighting followed, as you’d probably expect from someone who went to join the army and later became the god of war. Eventually Kuan was captured by the false (but winning) emperor’s forces and given the chance to recant and join the winning side. Knowing that was a path without honor, Kuan declined with a string of insults. Soon after, he was put to death, and then people started building temples and shrines to him.
Some thirteen hundred years later, he was sufficiently popular and respected to be named the God of War and Great Just Emperor Who Assists Heaven and Protects the State during the Ming Dynasty. He’s revered by both Buddhists and Taoists in China and was regularly worshiped by government officials up to the end of Imperial China.
As you might imagine, my interest in Kuan Yu goes back to my Buddhist period, and he’s one of the deities that’s stuck around (along with Kuan Yin, and Matsu, and… okay, so I didn’t really stop working with any of the deities I worked with regularly…) despite my distinct lack of being Buddhistic lately.
The thing I like about him is that he makes doing the right thing look soeasy. I mean, aside from the war part, and the getting killed part. But he’s the one I turn to when I feel like there should be a right answer to a situation, and I just can’t figure out what it is.
He’s also the being that I ask for help when I’m trying to do the right thing, but the right thing is fucking hard. (I suspect this is why I never formed any kind of relationship with Tyr – I already have that kind of right-thinking father figure in my life, and I didn’t need another one, and Tyr’s not pushy like some of his friends.) It’s not that he makes doing the right thing easier – I suspect that he’s a strong proponent of the “if it’s easy, it’s not worth doing” school of thought – but talking to him helps me find the strength to keep going, and get my head straight when I’m in danger of losing sight of what’s important.
Something brief for the PBP… One of the first jotnar I ended up speaking with when I began journeying to Jotunheim was the giant Hræsvelgr, who lives in a cave-like nest on a very tall mountain that overlooks one of the seas that border Jotunheim. He prefers the shape of the eagle, but will sometimes take a humanoid form; he did that for me the first few times we spoke. His wings help create the harsh, destructive winds that blow across the waters, and like Ran, he takes wreckage as his due. He’s been collecting things for… well, a really long time, I guess, and his home is pretty stuffed. I’m trying to figure out a more respectful way to say it, but essentially it’s half “curiosity shop” and half “Hoarders episode”. He doesn’t often share what’s rightfully his, but he sometimes bargains and even more rarely gives gifts. He’s also good at finding what’s been lost. I wouldn’t recommend seeking him out without a reason, but if he’s willing to teach you, there’s a lot you can learn, tucked away amid centuries of wreckage.
Showman “That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.” – Ray Bradbury, [The October Country](http://www.amazon.com/October-Country-Ray-Bradbury/dp/0380973871%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0380973871) So autumn begins, my first autumn feeling like I belong here. One of the interesting things about living in the desert was that the seasons are not quite the standards you expect. I don’t mean spring – summer – winter – fall, though that’s true too. Summer is when the leaves crunch under my feet, and autumn is when life comes back. Of course, it was the only place I’ve ever been where the October people show up in October. (That is – the State Fair is in October.) Then the late winter is the time all the traditional circus-fair-type productions come through. You know, they show up on a bunch of sixteen wheelers and unfold a bunch of attractions that only look passably safe and a some sketchy-looking games and a funhouse and maybe some crappy food, and they set up for the weekend in a parking lot somewhere. Last year, to celebrate that first equinox heralding autumn in so long, I went to Oaks Park. Part of the magic of amusement parks is that they should not exist – they’re a kind of permanent liminal place. Carnivals are meant to come and go, and even amusement parks tend to have their seasons. (Disney is… an entirely different kind of magical space.) My time of year has always been the span of Needing A Sweatshirt, from the first crisp morning until it snows. Of course, I’m on the other side of the country, in an entirely different weather pattern now. I can make my sweatshirt work for most of the winter, here. It creeps in a little ahead of the equinox, here and there: honey crisp apples at the farmers’ market and a few wet days in the 60s. The equinox makes it official, though. And in the face of that, I can’t help but think about Odin, and the faces he’s shown me. Once the autumn touches you, and your leaves go red and orange and yellow, and your afternoons get cold and your evenings come early, well, that’s not the sort of thing that gives up easily. And the Professor, once he gets his fingers in, well, he doesn’t give up easily either. Autumn was always my favorite season, even before I figured out the obvious. But that really took shape for me in college, when I suddenly had all the freedom I’d imagined even if I was only a few hours from home, and I seemed to have all the crisp dawns and crystal cold midnights I could stand. Yes, even the autumn of my freshman year ended eventually, but it waited a good long time – past Thanksgiving break that year, ridiculously long for that part of the country. After being inspired to revisit the Oz books, I gave some serious thought to the Wizard of Oz as an archetype. There’s something to be said for starting from faking it and learning as you go, after all. Somewhere along the way, he started talking back. The Wizard is a humbug, but in the books he’s a fucking clever humbug. Eventually he does learn magic from Glinda, but by that point he’d already accomplished everything interesting. And since they were both carnival men, I couldn’t help associating the Wizard with Professor Dark. It wasn’t until more recently that I made the final leap – Odin himself was traveler, con-man, teacher and storyteller, as like to deal you fair as to take you for all you were worth. The line between showman and shaman is perhaps thinner than we like to admit. When a mess of tents and a man with a vision roll into town, it can be hard to tell if he’s a faith healer or a carny at first glance. (And Oz is, don’t forget, on the other side of the rainbow.) I have plenty of context for Odin now. I’ve studied the myths and the lore, and I would most likely recognize him if he came to me in floppy hat and traveling cloak. The face of Odin that most resonates with my experience of him is the wanderer and storyteller, traveling in human guise from one home to the next, facing whatever adventure was around the corner. Often, when I see him, he still chooses the face of the showman for my benefit. With as many names as he has, I’m certainly not going to begrudge him two more. Portlandia I imagine that Portlandia wonders sometimes how Athena managed with Athens. Portland wants desperately to be a city of art and craft, of good food and progressive politics, hip and clever, full of small businesses and neighborhoods that are still full of neighbors, a beautiful city full of art and nature. And it is those things! It is also a city shaped by racism and gentrification, a city that wants artists but where artists can barely afford to live, and a city that fails to live up to its ideals. Portlandia has been on the city’s seal since 1878. A tall woman bearing a trident, she looks out over the Willamette River and her valley. She is described as the Queen of Commerce and a star shines over her head. I was first drawn to her because of this; I saw her as a relative of my goddess Mara. New to the city and job-hunting, I made offerings that we might find work. Ultimately we ended up in a suburb outside of Portlandia’s domain, but I kept circling back to her and to the city itself. A bit over thirty years ago, Portland installed a large (second only to the Statue of Liberty) copper statue of Portlandia above the entrance to the then-new Portland building. This depiction of Portlandia does not tower over the river valley, but instead she crouches down, holding her trident out to one side and reaching out to the city inhabitants below. There is an amazing amount of emotion in her face and body, and it was this statue that helped me make that connection with her. She is the city, and like the city, she wants to be better. She wants to make things better for her inhabitants. She reaches out to help. She offers a hand up. I have gone to her for help finding work and for help finding housing. I’ve never seen her work alone; it’s always in concert with other local spirits when I get results. I call her with the rivers, with the bridges, with the city ancestors, and with the spirits of smaller parts of the city. The offerings she seems to like best are public praise (Portland is a little bit self-obsessed), taking care of the homeless, and taking care of the city itself. Supporting local artists, local presses and local businesses is good, too. When you can, battle gentrification and racism, and hold the city government accountable. Do your part to take care of Portland and Portlandia will do her part to take care of you as well. *This post was inspired by Sara Mastros’s [American Gods Project](https://traifbanquet.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-american-gods-project.html); there’s plenty of good stuff worth reading over there.* -- Portlandia is the goddess of the city of Portland. She’s been here since at least 1851, which is a pretty good run for the west coast. The poem at the statue’s base says that “our breath/ becomes her city.” The most famous depiction of her, the large statue downtown, shows her reaching out to the people below. This is not just quality sculpture, though – I’ve found this to be very much the spirit of the city. She will make sure you can get by, more than any other city I’ve ever lived in. I’ve found that Portlandia and the other city spirits are great for metaphysical networking. Making offerings to her, Columbia and the Skidmore Fates for help or asking advice tends to result in “coincidental” results – suddenly turning up job listings or apartments, taking a shortcut that happens to take me past something else I never knew I needed, and so on. The spirits of the place where you live know the city, and they can direct you to the places you need to go. As you might imagine, the best ways to honor her are to take care of her city and its inhabitants. Get involved in planning events in Portland. Work to help those who need it, or preserve the city’s infrastructure. It doesn’t have to be major – volunteer or pick up litter or whatever works for you. I think most cities have their own spirits, though I rarely see them personified like Portlandia. It’s worth reaching out to the place where you live. Most cities have a personality and an interest in their inhabitants. The land itself has its own personalities – in our case, there’s the Columbia and the Willamette, there’s Mt. Hood watching over us, there’s dozens of smaller spirits of place attached to the buildings and the parks. Just as your neighbors are a part of your neighborhood whether you hang out with them or not, and it’s not a bad idea to get to know them, it’s also a good idea to get to know the spirits of the place you’re living. Whether you’re putting down roots or just taking a break, knowing where you are is the first step in knowing where you’re going. City Spirits I’ve talked about city spirits that are the energy or personification of a city or a neighborhood, but I don’t think I’ve talked about urban legends in that context. Portland is a great city for this, but almost all cities have a few of these urban legends, folk heroes, and so on. You can leave an offering to Walt Disney in Anaheim or Harvey Milk in San Francisco – and in Portland we can call on Joan of Arc, Theodore Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln – but you can also offer to the… less historical spirits that every city has. Portland has a wide assortment of these spirits. There is of course the great ***[Portlandia](https://rubedo.tiddlyhost.com/#Portlandia)*** with her statue downtown. There are structures, like the many bridges, that each have their own personalities and energies. Another good place to start meeting urban city spirits is by looking at the statuary you have around you. The best pieces are the ones people see and even interact with every day – like velveteen rabbits, they start to take on the characteristics we see in them. Here in Portland, we have Paul Bunyan, who can be called on when you’re battling big business. There’s Allow Me, the spirit of shared transportation – he’s explicitly linked to cabs, but I’ve invoked him in the name of getting the MAX to run on time, too. There are the Skidmore Fates, whom I’ve entreated for good luck and coincidence. There’s Ramona and Henry in Grant Park, if you’re in the mood for invoking fictional characters – Ramona’s a great one to call on if you need a little chaos. There are also a variety of animal sculptures if you’re looking for a focus when dealing with animal spirits. There’s the Thompson Elk downtown on Main Street, who I’ve called on for protection, as well as cats, bears, dear, beavers, otters, and Chinese elephants – and that’s just off the top of my head. Want to get to know the people in your neighborhood? Start by thinking about the places you pass regularly that seem to have personalities of their own. They might be statues or man-made structures, or they might be parks or natural features that have their own active land wights. If there’s a place or a piece that you’re drawn to, you can spend some time with it to get to know it, and maybe leave a small offering. From there, it’s pretty much the same process as getting to know any other spirit or small god, just more immediate because you know exactly where that spirit lives. Bridges of Multnomah County https://jackwren.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/bridges-of-multnomah-county/ [A stitched panorama of the Hawthorne Bridge in...](http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hawthorne_Bridge_0.jpg) !http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Hawthorne_Bridge_0.jpg/300px-Hawthorne_Bridge_0.jpg A stitched panorama of the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland, Oregon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I haven’t written very much about localized paganism lately, mostly because I’ve been distracted and antisocial. When I spend less time out of the house, I spend less time appreciating the land, the rivers and the cities. That’s a shame, though, because I love the place where I live, and I want to get back in the habit of appreciating it. I was thinking about the personalities of the rivers I’ve met up here, and it occurred to me that I’ve gotten a feel for the personalities of the bridges as well. There are [quite a few bridges](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_Portland,_Oregon#Bridges) up here, and I haven’t gotten to know all of them, but I’ve got a few impressions.The bridge I’ve spent the most time on is the Glenn L Jackson Memorial Bridge, which I used to cross frequently on my way to and from work. It’s a rather sensible bridge with a romantic streak, as it seems to enjoy the idea of itself being a river of light at night in contrast to the river it crosses. The other major bridge over the Columbia is the I-5 bridge, which is more likely to be a little congested. It’s got an interesting personality, perhaps because half of it is considerably older than the other span – it’s a bit like a pair of conjoined twins. When the lifting portion of the bridge goes up to let river traffic through, there’s a palpable feeling of excitement like being a small child whose realized everything stops when he does something. The [Burnside Bridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnside_Bridge) is pretty much the iconic Portland bridge – it’s more decorative than any of the other bridges, offers shelter to the Portland Saturday Market on the west side and a skate park on the east side, and is also home to the iconic [Portland Oregon sign](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Stag_sign). It’s the hipsterest of all the bridges, and I say that with love, I promise. [Hawthorne Bridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_Bridge) feels more hippy than the Burnside Bridge, a little more down to earth, and very welcoming of pedestrians and bicyclists in particular. The [Morrison Bridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrison_Bridge) is hard to get a feel for because it’s currently under construction. (You can only cross it in one direction! I’d imagine that’d make any bridge feel off-kilter.) It’s a bit of a showy personality, though, especially because of the special colored lights it displays. [Marquam Bridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquam_Bridge) is graceful in a concrete sort of way and *busy*. I haven’t really been able to get a feeling for it beyond that yet [Sellwood Bridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellwood_Bridge) is down near Oaks Park, and I’ve only crossed it a handful of times, but it seems to enjoy the crowds in view at Sellwood Park and on the river. It’s a tired bridge and badly in need of repair. [Steel Bridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Bridge) is the bridge the MAX uses to cross the Willamette River, so I’ve ridden on it a number of times. I tend to be anxious when on this bridge because of that, so it took me a longer time to get a sense of the personality of this bridge. Steel Bridge is actually very serious-minded, probably because it plays such a distinctive role in Portland transportation. There’s several other traffic bridges that I’ve only been over once or twice and a few I haven’t been on at all, including the railway bridge over the Columbia. The Old Man So, funny story. Back when I first started reading tarot, the Hanged Man came up for me pretty much all the time. Often enough that it was a running joke with my friends, anyway. I identified quite a bit with the card, and would sometimes even use it as the querant card if I wanted to get a reading without it coming up. I was not really into Norse myth at all at the time, so when Odin came around and said he’d been letting me call him Professor Dark since I was small, I didn’t really make the connection between him and the hanged man that came up in the readings, though in retrospect I think that may have been what the cards were telling me. I asked Odin recently how long he’s been around, what made him decided to take an active role in my life at all. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what was going on, and I certainly didn’t reach out to him, unlike a lot of my deity relationships. The answer I got was, essentially, always. And I’ve been chewing on that for a little while, and now I’ve got a theory. I don’t think that Ol’ Blue Eye picked me out in the cradle or anything like that, but I have always been the hanged man. I almost died at birth because I nearly hung myself on the umbilical cord. The Professor was one of my first… I guess you could say spirit guides. A parental figure, in a fucked-up way. He sends me messages via fortune teller machines and whispers to me on dark rides. I knew him before I knew angels or gods, when I was a small child whose heart nearly burst with hope looking down on the amusement park from the top of the ferris wheel at night. All the wrong things used to scare me. Some of them still do, but I don’t know many seven-year-olds who fear mediocrity with the chills that used to keep me up at night. I worried that somehow I would have to stay in that town forever. I worried that the goblins would never steal me away. (Turns out you have to ask politely, but that’s another essay.) I still credit the Old Man with getting me out, just as I credit the Dark Lady with keeping me sane while I did it. He’s the one who pushes me when I get complacent and drags me kicking and screaming when I lag behind. I don’t see him a lot these days, and I usually curse him when I do, but in the end I always end up thanking him. Laima Laima is the Latvian goddess of fate who’s often grouped with Mara and Dievs. I started cultivating a relationship with her because Mara wanted me to; she wanted her sister-goddess on her altar next to her. In true Indo-European fashion, Laima can be related to other deities. The synchronism I’ve seen for Laima that makes the most sense to my experience is Lakshmi. At least one Latvian folklorist agrees. I’ve even found that she gets along very well with Ganesha. She’s sometimes a member of a triad of fate deities with Kārta and Dēkla – sometimes they’re three goddesses, sometimes they’re a triple goddess, and sometimes only Laima is mentioned. Triple-deities of fate are fairly common throughout Europe – there’s the Norns, the Greek Fates, and so on. I don’t have any experience of her as a triple deity myself; I’ve never spoken with Kārta or Dēkla. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s the case, just that I can’t back it up. Laima rules over unchangable fate, but she also cares about the people whose fates she sets, and will help. There are dainas or folksongs in which she gives silver or other gifts to virtuous young women so they can marry. Laime, spinner of fates, Why have you decreed That I must leave my parents For a stranger? (Kr. B. 17755) The day has gone from me, The night has gone from me, The life that Laime formed, Such was the life I lived. (Kr. B. 9170) That girl kept her honour: Laime wove a wreath for her, Laime wove a wreath for her, Dipt it into silver: Laime’s wagon and God’s steed, Sun’s daughter is the match maker. (Kr. B. 6621) Building a relationship with a goddess in this way is a new experience for me since I’m doing it at Mara’s behest – not at the goddess’s own, or at my own. I’ve never approached a god because I felt I was “supposed” to, not because I wanted to. Tzymir https://jackwren.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/the-lord-of-earth/ !https://i0.wp.com/jackofmanytrades.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/tyzmir-206x300.png Tzymir, the Lord of the Earth, is one of the original outsiders. He is also known as the Dead Lord because he was murdered. Before recorded history, three of the earliest of the skygods came together and killed him; they wanted his blood and his magic to allow them to build a stronger world for themselves and their followers. The societies they created over his corpse survived for hundreds of years, and so Tzymir is also called the grandfather of humanity. If you draw the Lord of Earth card in a reading, he often represents the culmination of a significant project, especially one that required hard work and sacrifice. Depending on the position, he could also constitute a warning – someone may be waiting in the wings to build their world on your foundation. Either way, wheels have been set in motion. Earth moves slowly, but when that energy reaches the surface, everybody knows it. What happened after for Tzymir? Some societies remember him for his death alone, while others accord him a place in the afterlives. There he is regarded as the arbiter of the fates of dead gods and spirits, while he waits to one day see the skygods who killed him. Whether he seeks revenge or some other resolution remains a mystery. He has no real established cultus, but occasionally is given offerings by very powerful blooded sorcerers and adepts who are either in pursuit of immortality or facing imminent, violent death. First Made for the Artificer The other day I posted the prayer beads I made for Mara. They weren’t the only beads I made that day, though. It took me a while to work my way around to understanding Brhenti as the Daughter of Metal. Part of the reason for that was my more extensive experience with another spirit associated with smithwork, for whom I found a name, [Taksa](http://jackofmanytrades.info/2014/04/slotting-the-model-together/), last year. One of the challenges of fictional recon or really of any work with unknown deities is a requirement for openness. We make guesses, we draw conclusions, and sometimes we are right and sometimes we’re a bit off the mark. One way to handle this is simply to be willing to revise; I have a lot of thoughts about revision that I want to visit in the next couple of weeks. Another way to handle it is [the way the Otherfaith does](http://daoineile.com/2015/03/01/pagan-experience-canon-headcanon/), allowing for a variety of canons, as well as fanfic AUs, among the faithful. I have experienced the Artificer as one of the forces of Order, and I have experienced the Smith as a demigod-type human child of spirits. I suspect these may both be true; I think this may be another figure who entered the labyrinth. I am pretty sure Taksa is Brhenti’s child, now, but until I get a myth I’m reserving judgement. It’s been a long-standing habit of mine that the first of any new craft I do is offered to Taksa as the Artificer, because the energy I’ve put into it is that first spark of creativity and understanding. I started this years ago, when I offered to him the project I produced the first time I worked in a forge. In this case, while I’ve done beadwork before, I’ve avoided fancier beadwork and especially fiddly, rosary-style beadwork because my sense of what I was capable of was skewed by previous experience with my ex, who made jewelry. When I sat down to do proof of concept before launching into a full project for Mara, I produced the first beadwork I’ve done in years and the first rosary-style piece I’d ever done. That’s definitely new enough to qualify for an offering, in my book. Taksa is definitely a spirit who keeps up with the times, as interested in computers and other technology as he was in the forge when steel was invented. This is one of the reasons why the terminal pendant is a piece of memory, wire-wrapped. His best-known spirit partner is Danec of the Rivers. In Danec’s case, they are both fierce seekers of knowledge, though they have been known to get competitive and sometimes ridiculous.