Pre-Adoption Update (Oh my gods this is really happening)
Goodness gracious, life can change so quickly sometimes. It wasn’t two months ago that I wrote about the challenges of giving up biological motherhood and how TheScott and I were starting classes to become foster/adoptive parents. Well… those classes are over. We have most of our paperwork in, we just had an exit interview, and we’re...
Bragi and Iðunn
Now that I’ve gotten engaged in a regular practice of ancestor veneration, I’ve turned my attention to learning more about my ancestral gods. One particular pair that’s caught my attention as being particularly apropos to my life are Bragi and Iðunn. Bragi and Iðunn (pronounced EE-thuhn, sometimes Anglicized to Iduna) are two gods of the Æsir (EYE-zr),...
Letting Go of Stuff: Heathen Feng Shui?
A few months ago I read an article called Norwegian Feng Shui in which the author tied together her Norwegian roots and her interest in feng shui. I thought it was a pretty cool article. I’m not totally up on feng shui with its bagua and five elements (earth, fire, water, wood, metal) instead of Celtic four...
I’m Anti-Consumerist, Not Anti-Capitalist
Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption…Â We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people...
Hamingja – The Embodiment of Luck
The Norse embodied the idea of personal luck in a spirit called a hamingja. (It’s pronounced HA-ming-yah; thanks to Alda Villiljós for the correct pronunciation!) Each person has their own hamingja following them around, and just like some people have stronger muscles than others, some people’s hamingjas are stronger than others. Nobody’s hamingja wishes them...
Maiden Mother Crone
The waxing/full/waning moon, as seen on Bri’s (our mascot – Brisingamen’s) crown, might be the second most recognized symbol of Paganism after the pentacle. It uses the phases of the moon to represent feminine power and the cycle of change that is birth, creation, death, and rebirth. The roundness of the full moon recalls the...
Ancestor Veneration in Practice
As I wrote a couple weeks ago, ancestor veneration is a part of many faiths, including several branches of Paganism. Anyone can set an altar up, and for a lot of people, myself included, regularly renewing our connection to the past through the practice of ancestor veneration is not only comforting, but powerful. Ancestors are there...
Buying Art
I live in an amazing city. And the more I attend local events, the more I appreciate the wider bands of frith. TheScott took me to the East Austin Studio Tour (EAST)Â on Sunday and we had a grand old time. I love paintings, especially originals, not prints. The kind where you can see the brushstrokes...
A Good, Wholesome Pagan Girl
I’ve noticed we don’t get defined this way a lot. Pagans get defaulted to “mysterious†or “rebellious†or even “tech-savvy†but not “wholesome.†I think this is a real shame. Why? Because I’m a good, wholesome Pagan girl. In fact, I think there are a lot of good, wholesome people out there who are not...
Ancestor Veneration – A World Tradition
One of the rituals I have engaged in since I became a Heathen is ancestor veneration (also called ancestor worship or ancestor reverence). Ancestor veneration (to save space I’ll call it AV in this article) is practiced around the world and has been for thousands of years in native cultures from Asia to the Americas...
Oh, Behave! – Wyrd, Frith, and the Social Contract
One of the most common defenses people give for religion is that it brings order to society. People look to their faith to tell them how to be good people, and because of their fear of God, Hell, or even the punishing power of priests, people choose to behave...
Autumnal Equinox Resolutions
I hope you and yours had a lovely equinox! Last autumnal equinox, what we Heathens call Winter Finding, I wrote about letting go of the old to make room for the new, and I thought I’d hold myself accountable by letting you know how I did. Last year I said I’d let go of… …the...
