Author of The Dire Deeds, first of the Guild of Ornamental Hermits queer urban fantasy/paranormal romance novels, published August, 2022. The Witching Work was published in Spring 2023. The Queerest Quest is scheduled for publication on Nov. 1, 2023 The Perilous Past, 4th book, is in progress. Also, clinical sexologist, sexuality counselor, hypnotist, and hypnosis instructor. Preferred name: Avnas Mars. Ze/zir.
The quote in the title is from David Bowie’s Rock and Roll Suicide, and those were the days of Bowie at the peak of his most androgynous glam. These were the days and nights of glitter, of dancing in clubs, of struggling to make ends meet in dreary day jobs and yet, still being fabulous. But the Bowie song that gets me the most, that most reminds me of John and who we were together in those days, was Heroes.
Today is yet another anniversary of his decomposed body’s discovery in a canyon in San Diego. I’ve had decades of these anniversaries now. So many of them. John died a suicide and broke my heart.
I’ve written in past years about John, here and here. Today I wrote this in Facebook:
John, you died in 1976 in that San Diego canyon, sometime between August 15th when you left my house without a word or a note (I’d just left for work) and September 1st, when the coroner knocked on my door and told me they’d found a badly decomposed body that they thought I could identify. That body fit your description. It was wearing jeans, a shirt with small Carmen Miranda cartoon women on it, and a heavy gold ring. It turns out that someone in your beauty college saw that heavy gold ring, which the police showed on T.V. news, asking the public for any info that could lead to your identity. That someone knew you well enough to send the coroner to me.
This wasn’t the first time you attempted suicide (pills, ground glass, drano…), but it was the time you finally succeeded.
And it turned out that some feckless, idiot acquaintance of ours who should have known better, sold you 100 barbiturates. You chose your moment, your day to die, and took them and a water bottle down into the ravine in the Hillcrest neighborhood where we lived. Eventually the police responded to neighbors’ reports of a bad smell coming from that ravine…
Missing Persons wouldn’t listen to me when I reported your disappearance, your history of suicide attempts. Your shrink simply shrugged. Mentally ill, queer youth on SSI were a dime a dozen and so what if one of them went missing? I hated these authorities, but the coroner at least spoke to me like a human being.
So today is the day I mark and dread every year–September 1st. It’s a date flanked by my children’s birthdays. For many years, that was a mercy, but that’s no longer true. Now it’s just the stark reality of a life that I have lived without you.
I hope you are resting in peace or incarnated among parents who would actually care for you as a child this time around. You were so uncared for in this life that you left, outright abused, kicked out into the street at age 13, again at 15, doing what kids on the street do to survive… Not all the attention and love you received from paramours and tricks would ever, ever make you whole. Still, I wish we could have stayed friends all these years, and shared our stories and arch observations over cups of tea and during walks among roses. I miss and love you and always will.
Just a few days ago, well-known pagan author and practioner, John Beckett, posted in his Patheos blog about a “Seiðr oracular ritual at this year’s Mystic South.” Beckett witnessed a quite compelling incident involving the Norse deity Loki. In answer to an attendee’s question for Loki, “he [Loki] didn’t just whisper words to the Seeress in Helheim for her to relay. He took full control of the Seeress.”
Beckett wrote this blog post, called Three Messages from Loki to the World, as a “journalist.” He notes that he did not receive the revelations himself but observed what happened during the ritual and what was said and then later compared notes with the seeress. In essence, the three messages are (and I’m paraphrasing already existing paraphrasing from Beckett’s blog):
Seek and cultivate joy.
Build masks and create safety zones, as Loki apparently conveyed the sense that being a full-on, “out” pagan isn’t quite safe right now and we need to take care of ourselves and others.
And recognize that we are a destructive portion of a cycle, in the part that Beckett calls “Tower Time” and others call Ragnarök.
Loki’s three messages, as written and interpreted in Beckett’s post, are already sending ripples throughout many pagan and heathen circles. I have some thoughts.
Joy
According to Beckett’s blog post, Loki signaled his possession of the seeress by “laughing and dancing.” This is Loki at his most accessible. This is the “persona” he shows most often to those of us who encounter him and/or work with him. He’s a scamp, a trickster who trips the light fantastic and makes all things fantasical in turn. Sometimes he is even a delightfully shameless and irresistable seducer. But Loki is also a being who has suffered horribly himself. He knows firsthand how people near (and maybe even dear) to you can turn against you and inflict the most dire cruelties without even a “by your leave” or a chance at what we moderns call “relationship repair.”
Loki, bound to a rock with one son’s entrails and fearing that the other boy has fled in wolf shape to some unknown wilderness, endured poison dripping from a fanged serpent (except when dear Sigyn catches the poison in a bowl). He must have been hard put to scrape up any vestiges of joy during that time. And yet, my UPG is that he did. I imagine him composing Norse equivalents of rude limericks about the Aesir, exchanging tender memories with Sigyn, and perhaps even finding ways to turn his pain into pleasure. He was–he is–a potent, powerful, and clever being who possesses a knowledge of magic. He would not have let himself succumb wholly to despair.
“To nourish the desire to live, to make it burn: only this counted.” This is a phrase from Jacque Luseyran’s phenomenal essay, “Poetry in Buchenwald,” in Against the Pollution of the I. And if you have never read this essay, you should. Luseyran (1924-1971) was known as “the blind hero of the French resistance” and he did survive his time in Buchenwald, unlike many of the men he wrote about. These were men who warmed themselves with poetry in the bleakest, most dangerous circumstances, experiencing their voicing of it as “an act, an incantation, a kiss of peace, a medicine” even as they were dying–slowly of starvation or suddenly through Nazi violence.
Loki knows, better than we do, that small morsels of joy can be kindled in times of duress. They can make us burn for life and survival. And when times are good, we must revel in delight and let every glad feeling take hold in our bodies. We must dance. We must laugh. We can sing and declaim poetry. We can never have too much joy.
Mask
This advice to “mask up” is troubling. I have no problem at all with donning a mask for disease prevention or to avoid toxic chemical fumes, but it’s too late for me to go back into a “broom closet” and pretend to be something other than pagan, witchy, and Lokean. There’s this blog, for one thing, and my fantasy novels for another. Plus, I’ve got “other” marked on my Oregon driver’s license. Several years ago I decided to stop pretending to be other than I am (through omission rather than comission) and it’s this freedom that provides my life with meaning and joy. (Remember joy?)
And yes, I recognize that we (still) have “witch privilege” in this country. Other parts of the world are not so tolerant. People are killed for less than what I do on a semi-regular basis.
However, I had a shock yesterday. Someone that I once thought of as a colleague, and at one point even as a fledgling friend (until I realized he was a twump fan), sent me the most disturbing email. The gist was that “woke was wacked,” there is too much gender variety and any discussion of it “sexualizes” children, and that all this was a “Luciferian” plot. In other words, he was doing his best to justify a moral panic (and even a Satanic panic) about certain kinds of queer people and had even written an article about this, as a sexologist, in LinkedIn. I know people who are both queer and embarked on a Luciferian path and I could easily imagine this man (yes, of course he’s a cis-het white dude) boosting his own career trajectory at their expense, inciting others to violence against them.
And with Norse Loki still considered “the Norse Satan” in some circles (thanks in part to Snorri Sturleson), well then… I can begin to understand Loki’s second message quite easily.
Life After Turmoil
In many parts of the U.S., “turmoil” can seem (to a lucky few) like it’s something that happens somewhere else, to other people in other neighborhoods or countries, and that somehow sheltered existences (which are most often white and moneyed) will continue as they always have. Loki says otherwise and we can see this easily in so many ways.
This is perhaps the vaguest part of Loki’s message. Yeah, a lot sucks right now. What are we going to do about it? Perhaps the first two parts of his message provide clues? Joy and safe places. Mutual aid? If we can learn to provide these things, not just for ourselves but for others too, perhaps we will still have something worthwhile even if we find ourselves one day standing in the ruins of “civilization as we know it.”
Beckett interprets this as “life goes on.” After a catastrophe, it does, at least for some. The important thing is (and will be) the inner qualities and values of those post-catastrophe lives and the social changes that result. Will we have regenerated our planet’s soil? Dismantled racism, colonialism, sexism, all forms of queer phobia, ageism, ableism, and more? Will we each have the generous heart and robust will to accomplish even a small part of what needs to be done in our communities to bring a more just and equitable world into being?
Once Loki is freed from his fetters, this is one way I imagine him. I like this picture because I know that this stern figure (frowning so much yet wearing so little) could easily transform in the next nano-second into a gleaming Lord of the Dance, who invites us all to join in, even if our dance is on rubble and dust.
The North Wind, an illustration by Kay Nielsen. But it’s so Loki!
It’s been quite awhile since I actually blogged about my “most trusted one,” Loki Laufeyjarson. That’s because there hasn’t been much to say and that in itself is something to note. I’m not alone in this. In certain online communities where Lokeans gather, people are wondering where Loki went. The oft-repeated story is “He was all over me and now he’s not around any longer. What happened?” I think it’s just Life Happening, his and ours.
For example, I’ve spent the last several months adjusting to yet another set of huge, complex changes, and I’ve also been dealing with a gradual worsening of a chronic condition, soon to be fixed (I hope) with surgery. So I’ve been tired, sick, exhausted, often quite sad, a bit fearful, and busy. Consequently I’ve let things go with regard to my formerly daily practices and I have (at times) even forgotten to place the daily cup of cinnamon tea on his altar. In fact, there have been a few times when I’ve put the hot water and honey in the cup, and placed it on the altar, but forgotten the tea bag. A year ago this would have been unthinkable.
I know that it’s foolish to neglect regular spiritual practices and devotions in the very times when I need connection with my spirit allies the most. And yet that’s what’s happened. I can’t change it. I can only do better, starting now.
But I also feel that ebbs and flows of attention are a natural part of the process. Fallow times and growing times are a part of the cycles I observe in myself and in all that’s around me. So I don’t feel insecure about my relationship with Loki, just temporarily not that connected. But it’s really up to me to nurture that connection, or not. Free will and all that. I feel that Loki is understanding to some extent. And he is probably as hooked on “new relationship energy” as any human polyamorist. If I’m not active in my devotions and cultivations, he (she, they, ze) is happy to go where there’s more action. And I’m okay with this as I know that whenever I ramp up the energy, he will be there.
And he’s not entirely absent. One thing that will sound absurd is that Loki plays with the pair of battery operated candles on his altar. He turns them on and off. I am not kidding. In fact, a previous battery operated candle stayed on for almost a full year, on just one battery that was only supposed to last ten hours. Again, not kidding. So every day he will turn the candles on. He used to do this in the morning. Lately he does it at night and I see them when I come up the stairs to go to bed. I’ve been feeling it’s a hint that I could (should?) renew my evening meditation practice with Loki.
Instead, I’ve just let myself vegetate. I crawl under the covers with a heating pad held against my belly and binge-watch stuff until I fall asleep. This is more than simply lying fallow. It smells of composting! And I guess it’s what I’ve needed until now.
The two of us, together as HeroForge figures.
In another way, though, I’ve been very much engaged with Loki these last few months. This is with regard to his role in my life as a muse, particuarly as a muse for my Guild of Ornamental Hermits fantasy novels. (See “Meet Lucky LaFey.”) The first book is coming out any day now (I’ve been saying this for quite some time, but it IS true) and I’ve done a major make-over of my book website, using images of HeroForge figures that I created, based on each character. Loki had unexpectedly steamrolled his way into my third book in the series and he is now deeply entrenched as a “handsome drifter” named Lucky LaFey (human guise). I cannot wait for people to meet him!
This is another form of devotional work for me, honestly. And Loki is a consummate muse. He is quite happy to live in stories that we humans tell and in images we create. The more the better, actually. And those of us who are fortunate enough to engage with him (her/they/zir) in this way never seem to tire of it!
I’ve enjoyed making HeroForge figures based on my book characters, but making images of Loki/Lucky is particularly amusing. Many members of his large family have also entered my books. In my third book I have it that Loki birthed seventeen witch daughters (“troll women”) as a result of eating the burnt woman’s heart (see Stanza 43). I’ve named them all and made HeroForge figures of them. Angrboda and Sigyn have “cameos” in the third book as well. However, of his children with Angrboda and Sigyn, only his missing son, Váli, has an actual role in the third book. Even so, I created figures for Jormungandr, Hel, and Fenrir, and Narfi. (No Sleipnir, though, as I can’t make eight-legged horses in HeroForge.)
A side note: As Zeus birthed Dionysus from his thigh, and Athena from his head, so I see Loki’s witch daughters emerging from various parts of his body in a similar fashion. Though as he’s a shape and gender-shifter, I suppose he could also have taken on a cis-female form for birthing them. (As for Sleipnir, I guess I assume Loki gave birth while still in mare shape.)
After writing this, now I see that I haven’t been as disengaged as I’d imagined at the start of this blog post. I’ve just been engaged in a different way, making images which are a new form of devotion, and preparing to launch yet another saga that will eventually feature Loki center-stage.
So, as always and forever, Hail Loki!
L to R: Angrboda, Loki (with cupcake and drinking horn), Sigyn, and Yours Truly, depicted via HeroForge.
Loki as Lucky LaFey, Rock God! Depicted via HeroForge.
Loki’s HeroForge figure is in the far back, at right. He’s standing on a rocky outcrop. The other characters are only a few of the large cast of characters in The Guild of Ornamental Hermits books.
My uncle, David E.O. Rath, died May 6, 1986, in San Francisco at the age of 56, from complications of HIV/AIDS. He taught English at San Francisco City College. This is the quilt block we made for him. It includes a photo album and a book of his poems, which we published posthumously.
There are some contemporary pagans who, for one reason or another, cannot set up an altar in the place where they live. Perhaps they have family members or roommates who would object to having a place for even modest pagan rituals and observances. But satisfying “altars” can be made out of scrapbooking albums, kitchen matchboxes, and other small containers that hold miniature items, tiny figures, small significant objects, and replicas of offerings.
I’ve recently discovered the joys of HeroForge.com and Inkarnate.com. HeroForge allows you to design and buy custom miniatures for gaming and collecting. You can buy them in plain grey plastic and paint them yourselves or spend a lot more money to have them painted for you. (FYI: you are not allowed to re-sell these figures or use them for commercial purposes.) For altar backdrops, Inkarnate.com is a website for designing maps and fantasy scenes. These are just two of the many resources on the internet.
Combine your designs with paper, glue, scissors, and perhaps some cash to buy a miniature from HeroForge, and you have the makings of a tiny space for communing with your chosen spiritual helpers and allies. Print out the scenes, and even images of the figures you design, glue them to cereal box cardboard and then cut them out — in other words, make pagan paperdolls to use as altar pieces!
I used to do this when my oldest kid wanted every toy in the pernicious catalogs that used to arrive at the house when he was little, and since we didn’t have that kind of budget, I’d make paperdolls out of the catalog pictures and he could play with them. It worked while he was still a toddler. (Later, not so much.)
Since Loki is my most trusted one, I’ll share a few of the HeroForge images I’ve made in the last week. It’s hard to not want them all, in 3D form, but the images can still make nifty paperdolls.
Make your own versions of figures and altar backdrops, and have fun!
Loki with electric bass.Loki accepting offerings.Loki with a lute.Images created via HeroForge dot com.
There I was, driving across the river to Eugene, to meet a friend and do my laundry at the most ecologically aware and environmentally healthy laundrymat I’d ever imagined (you simply CANNOT bring your own detergent–they provide the fragrance-free stuff). And there I was pondering magic and gender and the nature of matter and all kinds of other things, as I often do when I drive. And there I was, also listening to Roxy Music’s “Do the Strand:”
“…Dance on moonbeams, slide on rainbows…”
So, mundane, right?
And then it hit me, in triplicate: the wave/particle “duality” of matter (including human bodies); the wave/particle plurality of gender; and magic defined as willful collaboration with a wave state to manifest workings in the particle realm. And don’t forget the liminal, the spaces “between,” or rather the connective, shaded, gradations of energies (a rainbow bridge?) leading to the perceived binary of wave and particle, wave OR particle.
And wasn’t it great that my earrings (ones I haven’t worn for at least two years) were perfect illustrations of that nifty little epiphany had while grooving on Bryan Ferry’s voice?
The top of the triangle symbolizing the achievement of the “particle” state. The curved black and silver areas signifying liminal space and connection. The scooped shape of the bottom portion of the triangle standing in for the “wave” state. A conceptual microcosm!
I’ve been reading a little bit about Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy, in relation to pagan traditions of theurgy. The vertical ascent from “man” (matter) to union with “the one” (a personified wave?) never made much sense to me (neither did the Christian “descent” from “sinner” to “damnation”). These days nothing can be so neatly ordered or so clearly defined, especially in such crude terms. The quantum physics theory of wave-particle duality would have knocked the socks off Plato and subsequent adapations of his philosophy (including the Christianized versions).
The screenshot below is from ScienceDaily, which took the text from Wikipedia. Note that the explanation says “all objects” (meaning quantum-sized objects), sidestepping the mind-blowing implications for “all creatures great and small.” I mean, if less than bite-sized portions of ourselves are flickering between states, does that mean that we are also, as a larger entity–in some way–doing that too and our senses just aren’t refined enough to detect this? Perhaps just enough of our flickering portions stay particle-ized long enough to provide the illusion of continuous particle-ized existence? I’ve long accepted the “matter is mostly empty space” idea, though I don’t experience myself or my tables, chairs, and cats this way, but that matter could also be “mostly inconsistent empty space” is a conceptual stretch. Is this the “void” that mystics have described, sans particle accelerators? This isn’t a new or original question, obviously. I remember calling up Gary Zukav (long long ago), halfway through The Dancing Wu Li Masters, to rave about this very thing.
But what exactly am I writing about here? I had a flash of mystic understanding, a brief moment of crystal clarity. I “saw” how magic and mystic practices are designed to reach (or struggle toward) the “wave state” (a kind of fluidity or creative chaos) for communion, manifestation, and/or enlightenment. Now I am having a hard time explaining it. And am I “right” in a absolute sense? Probably not, but I’m probably not “wrong” either.
As a non-binary person, I feel gender as a shifting state that I can describe as wave, particle, AND the liminal connective states. As a particle, photographed and therefore frozen in time, I could be (or feel) “gendered” one way. As a wave, a continuum, the static photo becomes a film, or at least a montage, and I could be (or feel) “gendered” in other ways. It seems natural then that my feelings about my material existence and how it entwines with the rest of creation, would also incorporate a sense of fluidity and a desire to bring something out of the creative chaos of the wave state, via magical workings, and into the “reality” of more static, particle-ized existence. Meditations, trances, devotional practices, spellworking… I see them now as designed to access awareness (of the creative power) of the wave portion of our existence.
But that’s just me. It’s “gospel” (as in the old, non-denominational meaning of “good news”) with a small “g,” only meant for me and perhaps others who might resonate with a bit of this or that. My epiphany can be classed as “unverified personal gnosis.”
Anything, really, to avoid my year-end bookkeeping. At least the laundry got done.
Since my almost fatal wounds this year, inflicted by a razor sharp “serpent’s tooth,” I’ve found odd comfort and a strange sort of peace in having survived what I have always felt would be my undoing–if not of life itself, at least of sanity. I am not being dramatic about the “almost fatal” part. As a person with clinical depression who has struggled with suicidal thoughts and feelings for several decades, I did not do very well with the sudden and (to me inexplicable) utter rejection by my eldest child. So, I had some very bad times in these last few months, but I managed to hang on, survive, and now even…dare I say?…thrive.
Let me explain. Ever since I was in my teens I have been deeply afraid of two things: dying in or of childbirth and of losing a child and going mad. I did get through two pregnancies in my thirties/early forrties, though not without problems, so that fear of dying thusly was laid to rest in this lifetime (at least). This fear may have been a “past life” remnant, or (more reasonably) a harsh thread woven through my DNA by hundreds or thousands of female ancestors who didn’t survive birthing but who left an ancestral orphan behind. Multi-generational trauma indeed. As for the other fear–the loss of a child and of sanity–a form of this fear played out in the “spontaneous combustion” incident that I’ve written about in a long ago blog. After that kundalini blast and during that ten-month period of carrying the atavistic spirit of a proud, passionate, deeply lonely woman during her final months of life as a pregnant mother who did indeed lose her baby and committed suicide in post-partum grief, I had to endure all her feelings and then NOT DO THE THING. I didn’t understand this entire episode, or its initiatory impacts, until the final, blessed gestalt when she was gone at last from me, and I could then understand the sweep of the story. Somehow, by not succumbing myself to suicide, I effected a peaceful release for her.
Was she a past life fragment, or simply a wandering spirit who attached herself to me at the moment I was blown to psychic bits and then reassembled, post kundalini? Who knows. I have theories, but no real facts. I think I know where she was living but I don’t even know her name. I never sensed more than a pre-thought of hers. What I did have was the strong personality and emotions of this woman, who psychically surrounded me like a giant cube of agar-agar while I remained intact within, like a small red bean, able to carry on all my employment and children-rearing duties as usual. So it was not a psychic break, dear readers, but a form of extended, extreme mediumship. And I could have never in a million years imagined such a thing would happen to me. I endured all but the final three weeks without any form of external guidance.
Now, to some readers, the above paragraphs may sound truly insane. Whatever. But however strange and strenuous this experience sounds (and it was), this was also a fruitful time that included lucid teaching dreams that have served me well now for years. Reflecting back, did I need this ordeal of “the woman” and her tragic loss to prepare me for the surgically precise torments of this year’s devastation? (Honestly, doesn’t it seem unnecessarily cruel to describe me, a mother who struggled to raise children through three decades of disability, sleep deprivation, and chronic fatigue as “exhausting?” But I digress…) It’s an odd thing to wonder if a child of mine was actually disappointed that I made it through the pandemic without croaking. It’s a worse thing to know that resentment plus mental illness has brought us to this point. Auwe…
So let’s leave the harsh words and murky, karma-riddled past behind now and focus on the lessons and learning that have emerged for me. I’ve been fortunate to have good friends–kindly people–within reach (if not in person, at least electronically). I was blessed to have been able to break free from Lake County, CA and come to a place which actually feels good, truly like home to me. Without my gods and guides, good friends and cats, and that hope of moving elsewhere–plus the distraction of necessary practical tasks to make it so–I am not sure I would have made it through this year (let alone the year before).
Lesson One: I didn’t go crazy with grief and loss. I felt all kinds of things, including suicidal desires, but I didn’t lose my mind after all. I didn’t succumb. So wow. That’s actually pretty cool. Now let me add here that I would never kill myself (unless doctor-assisted due to a fatal disease) since it would be horrible for all left behind but it truly, truly sucks to have to endure those feelings while they last. Those who deal with this understand what I’m saying. So the takeaway from this is a renewed sense of strength and resilience.
Lesson Two: Joy is possible and if it begins to sprout in the crevices of a fragmenting grief, it can gradually push itself to the sunlight and expand. I have an image here of plants pushing through concrete. All this bad, sad stuff? It’s compost, my darlings. Compost. Seeds that I thought would never germinate are now coming to life.
Lesson Three: Better living through dishwashing. Humble tasks are life-saving. And even if you can only manage to wash one teacup, it’s a god-damned victory. Savor it and reward yourself.
Lesson Four: Loki really does come and “hold the bowl” for me when the slow dripping poison overflows, when I really can’t do for myself and must make the ask. Sigyn did it for him. He will do it for us (though not indefinitely). And believe me, nothing is more lovely than the tender mercy of a generous, trickster spirit who dumps the poison, cradles your shattered heart, and then demands a donut. So yes, your deities, ancestors, and/or spirit guides can and do come to help if you want them, if you ask them.
Lesson Five: A good tool-kit helps. And reminders to use your tools are super helpful too. During these last several months I’ve revisited many online materials from sources that I respect, listened to podcasts and daily tarot readings, read books, and put more emphasis on renewing daily practices. Ariel Gatoga’s “solar light” meditation was particularly helpful throughout this year. Ditto for Aidan Wachter’s podcasts and interviews.
Lesson Six: Have fun with people who like you. I’m finally in a location where I can do that, so I’m making the most of this.
Lesson Seven: Call it ALL home, every bit of yourself. In this new house of mine, everything is going up on the walls or coming out of boxes. All these strange bits and pieces of my life, such as it is and will be. I’m welcoming all of me, for the first time in a long time. That also feels good.
I’ll be sixty-seven come Samhain. Life is too short for avoidable misery or for prolonging the misery that comes your way. I may not have kicked the bucket during the pandemic (and I hope to avoid that fate as long as I can) but since I now live in an area where I could (theoretically) be run over by the Bus of Death at any moment, why not make the most of life for as long as I have it? And when I go, I’ll go “wholly brightly” and even my shadows will be radiant. It’s the greatest prayer and the best “fuck you” to cruelty that I know.
Though I still haven’t found my stash of tealights in any box I’ve unpacked so far, I’ve begun to put together the new altar space in the landing at the top of the stairs. This “in-between” area is a passage between the two attic rooms and the stairs. Behind the back wall is a cubby hole door leading to a cramped, unfinished area which contains spiders, webs, and probably old rat droppings which have fallen between inner and outer wall spaces. I’ve blocked this area off with a shelf, but it’s still somehow appropriate that it is there. It’s a sort of symbolic “underworld” at the top of the house, the fourth path of the landing’s function as a “crossroads.” Someday I’m going to shove a small bowl of red salt in there, for purification, but at the moment it creeps me out and I don’t want the cats to get in there either. (There are similar cubby holes in each attic room, also blocked, also needing bowls of salt.)
The altars in the landing – works in progess.Details of portions dedicated to Loki (r) and Freya and Freyr (l).
As readers of this blog know, I’m oathed to Norse Loki. He (she/they) have most of the altar “real estate” in the form of the tall shelf above. I also honor other Norse deities. In this new house I’m pleased to have expanded areas for Freya, Freyr and Gerda. This place, with its micro-orchard of fig, plums, cherries, pears, and mulberries, is already a very Vanir space and we are in full fruit harvesting season right now (so, yay Freyr!). In the spring I hope the roses, lilacs, wisteria, and camelias, will be pleasing offerings to Freya. I also look forward to planting an herb garden dedicated to Gerda. A bit of outdoors will always be brought indoors, for dedication and thanks. And I’m planning a space for Thor…
Aside from the above Norse deities (and my own ancestors), there are other deities/spirits I honor: the Goetic Lord Amy/Avnas, the Celtic Brigit, and the Egyptian Bast. I look forward to expanding their altar spaces as well. And I am now adding personal deification of two fictional characters who have become spiritual “ancestors” to me: Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. I’d been thinking about this for awhile and when I unpacked a forgotten child’s tea set from China and a small plate with two rabbits under a crescent moon, well, that clinched it. In my mind there is no reason that spirits can’t “inhabit” fictional forms, to assist human understanding. (Deification of fictional characters is not without precedence. I mean, some people have been working with Lovecraft’s pantheon of Elder Gods for decades!) However I haven’t yet figured out the practice for honoring Wuxian and Wangji beyond incense and offerings. Asking for guidance is the next best step I suppose.
The beginnings of the Wei Wuxian & Lan Wangji altar space.
I mentioned wights in the title. I mean land spirits. I feel the trees of course. Their protective presence is quite palpable. But there are clearly other beings and other ancestors to acknowledge. I’ve barely gotten started.
Mostly, I am happy. This is an expansive and peaceful time, with many dreams come true. Magic is alive and I live in the midst of it.
Lady Of The Lake 