In the Last Month...

This entry will catch you up on some things that have been happening in my magical/spiritual life while I've been away from writing. Actually, I've only been away from writing in this blog, as I've taken on a writing challenge of 30 Poems in 30 Days with a good friend. Some of those poems will be posted here eventually, as they are devotional in nature or deal with mythological subjects.

Two weeks ago, the seidr group did a very productive and interesting exercise where we aspected the Norns. Three of us volunteered for the task, myself, Mouse, and Starr. Our little group is now down to eight members, four men and four women.It was good to have a male in the mix, and Mouse surprised me during the exercise. It took us a bit to get settled, Vidholf led us centering and made offering to the housewights and other spirits of place. We passed the Hof's Tyr horn and the Hofmead was particularly strong. I felt my trance floating on the edge of my consciousness very soon after passing the horn.

We began. Starr filled a vessel with some clear water and set it on the floor in the center of our group. She, Mouse and I then gathered around the makeshift well. At first, I wasn't connecting with the well, rather, with my staff. I began to "play" it, for lack of a better term, holding it like a guitar across my lap. Starr moved three tea light candles from our wooden chest to surround the well. Then I was able to better connect--my staff the Tree and the golden well, Urdbrunnir.

I heard and felt a rhythm strongly, and continued to play my staff with drumming fingers. I could feel the vibration through the wood and into my legs and the trunk of myself. Mouse was using a drop spindle to turn some thick yarn. Starr was quiet for long moments before she began describing what she viewed from the depth of the well. She and Mouse began conversing about the images there, but I don't recall everything. I was listening, seeing the light flicker and pulse, feeling the rhythm and melody come to me.

Mouse asked what I heard, and I sang it after taking a moment to find my voice. I have decided not to attempt translation of my glossolalia to Modern English, and it took a moment to find my tongue in my mouth and articulate words I never use in public. I don't remember at all the melody or the words, but Vidholf said afterward that it sounded as though a Welsh woman had attempted to sing something distinctly Middle Eastern. Thrundr thought he heard Frisian and a lot of Nauthiz runes. (For the record, I know neither Welsh nor Frisian, but once before when some of this tongue slipped from my lips, someone also said it sounded like Irish, which I know a bit.)

After singing, I felt myself sink deeper into trance, moving distinctly away from the well. Starr was describing a ship and the seas, then Mouse said the words "treasure," "gold," and "land." I felt distinctly the presence of Freyr, and I watched him die upon the barley field, his sacrifice for the returned fecundity of the land. Gold and barley took me back away to a barley field I remember from a previous time, long ago, a place I had not intended to return. I gripped my staff, and suddenly I felt the presence of Gullveig just as Starr said the words "Freya's tears," and the distinct feeling that she wanted to enter through me. But I resisted her, or Urd did, standing firm and nor budging from her place surrounding me. The resistance immediately brought me out of trance.

Momentarily, Starr began to act as seeress, prompting questions from the group. Vidholf asked first, and I had an answer for him from Freyr--sacrifice a labor of love, something it pained him to make, noting that Vidholf would know what this was. Thrundr asked about the land, and I knew it was dying. He asked if it would return and I knew that making a sacrifice to Freyr during the Loafmass would assure this. A question about Thor being displeased about this sacrifice, and I did not have an answer.

Afterward we discussed the session, the Norns and there were guesses as to which of the Norns each of us had taken on. I knew Urd, but in the end there was a lot of bleed-over between the three. Everyone found the work enjoyable and interesting, even moving. This is the type of work we've been discussing rather than doing for some time now, and it felt great to risk and start.

In other seidr news, I made a fertility bindrune for a good friend early last month at her request. She and her husband have have opted for in-vetro method, but after an awful mistake with their initial treatment, they were shaken and wanted something to help them focus their energy for the second attempt. I created the bindrune and Husband and I visited them for supper and, following our meal, I explained in detail each element and how focusing on them, or the bindrune as a whole, might work. This Saturday, in celebration of my friend's 40th birthday, she told me she was now pregnant with twins! This is fantastic news worthy of a boast, but I will wait, as they are, until the 2nd trimester before getting too attached to the idea. I'm working on another bindrune to prevent miscarriage, one that might come in handy for a few more of my friends who are trying to conceive.