#anglosaxonheathenery

[kinfriday]

Grim

As consciousness caught, I was warm and comfortable on my sleeping mat. Cocooned in my sleeping quilt, the world still felt far away.  

Still, it was time to get up, and get going. With a deep breath I threw off my quilt only for 26 degree air to hit me.  

“Oh dear Gods!” That certainly woke me up. Clutching my quilt, laying back down immediately, my eyes focused on the frozen condensation clinging to the top of my tent.  

What followed was a five minute pep up session.  

“You have to do this, It's resupply day. It’s not going to get any easier waiting here, just a few minutes of discomfort, then its oatmeal time and you’ll be rolling.”  

There was nothing to do, no way of getting rapidly warm, there was only facing and ultimately accepting the cold.  

This was what I signed up for hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Scorching hot days in the Mojave, then frigidly cold mornings in the High Sierras.  

The world did not care that we were heading into June, it still found cause to be freezing. 

Later on that morning, I’d lose feeling in my index finger and thumbs, and with that numbness, a loss of the ability to open and close them. It was miserable, my coldest day, no matter the gear I had, or the preparations I had made to be ready for those conditions.  

My circulation is poor, I’m deeply affected by the cold and that was just another reality to face.  

And how did the PCT end up for me? Did I ultimately make it to the Northern Terminus? 

I didn’t...  

Right at the Washington border, with about a month left to go, a severe injury took me off the trail and sidelined me for four months.  

Another goal missed, after countless work, countless dollars, and endless hours of effort.  

Life is often like that, I’ve found. When you have a goal, there’s two ways it can go, success or failure. Some people are great are finding success, other people are more like me and often on the struggle bus.  

No matter what though, failure is the base state, it’s the resting condition. Success is an active process, it must be perpetuated and maintained, which, in our world of entropy means that success will always degrade into failure.  

Seems grim doesn’t it? Eventually you will get too old, too hurt, too sick, too burnt out, and the routine will fly off the rails, destroying the heady idea that your current motion will carry you on through whatever challenge.  

Maybe it will, for a little while, but inevitably the cart will slow, come to a stop, and often roll back against the inevitable incline that you’ve encountered.  

We will all encounter these moments, and this is where many people will give up. It’s a natural result of the process. You get knocked down hard enough, or enough times, and it can entirely reshape your world and focus.  

I know this because I’ve been there many times, I’ve not just been knocked down, there have been moments where my entire world has burned to ashes, incinerating everything I ever thought I knew about myself, or the world before me, leaving me with nothing to do but start again.  

Eventually, at least in my case, there’s a question that begins to float like a demon in my head, one I’ve given far too much power too in the past.  

Why try at all? If it all ultimately comes to nothing, if I’m just going to fail, like I always fail, what’s the point in the effort? Relax, grab the pretzels, curl up in your chair and wait for the bus. Why do the work, when you can just coast. No ones going to blame you. Hell no one is even going to care much.  

Define nihilism, yet it’s an unavoidable point, isn’t it? Memento Mori.... I could be the most successful person on earth, hit every goal I’ve ever tried to achieve and still, at the end, there’s ol’ Death. They make no exceptions for champions or losers, coming for us all.  

But what was the reason for the goal? What was the point of the effort beyond reaching it? Something motivated me to try, to work hard, to set out from the Mexican border and go for it, even knowing that up to 60% don’t make it for whatever reason.  

Something motivates me to get back on that treadmill too, no matter how many times my knees or hips give out, sidelining me for a week or longer.  

Something keeps me coming back again and again, even though every routine I have eventually flies apart and burns before me and that’s what I call my “why.” 

The Why is what transcends success or failure, it’s greater than me, it’s the point of me. It’s the reason I am.  

It does not ultimately matter that injury took me off the trail, or that since I hit a peak in 2020, I haven’t been able to get anywhere near that peak again.... yet.  

Deep down, there’s a focus beyond myself, there’s a purpose, and we all have one.  

That’s our why, and that’s what you need to get back up, again and again when the world, or circumstance pushes you down, because it’s not tied to your emotions, your motivations, your passion, it’s tied to who you are.  

Nihilism can't touch it, because it is pure meaning, unassailable in the face of the abyss.

It is far better to live the life you want than the lie you are given, because to live the life you want, to chase that purpose, is to honor the core of who you are, and no matter how it goes, to chase that is a success that many will never find, no matter how you have failed, because that’s what it means to be real.  

[kinfriday]

Ritual Radical

One of the factors that allowed Christianity to spread so rapidly across Europe was a result of a unified liturgy.  

While there were local derivations, and debates on dates, such as with the Celtic and British churches, there was an overall trend of homogeneity not seen in heathen traditions.  

By and large this made Christianity a type of modular faith, with ready snap ins to infiltrate new cultures, allowing them to assimilate those cultures into their fold. Whereas with the old ways different villages, regions and even families might have different traditions, or venerate Gods at different levels (For some Tyr was the head of the pantheon, others Woden, for instance.) With Christianity elements of faith had a much more rigid structure, which combined with evangelical zeal allowed it to spread.  

Within our modern times in western culture these liturgical traditions have gone to effect me at a deep level. It was after all what I was raised with, having spent many years as an evangelical fundamentalist, ultimately pursuing a degree in the ministry.  

You would not have recognized me twenty years ago. 

This has translated into modern neopagan practice as many of us are converts from Christian paths. We take our cultural traditions of prayer and formalized worship with us and reinterpret and reincorporate them in new ways.  

Yet for all my ascetic ways, and liturgical history, I get very little out of formal ritual.  

Every day, on wake up, I kneel before my altar and recite my vows, my creed, and a daily prayer to the Gods ancestors and spirits. This, along with meditation is about the closest I come to a formal practice. Offerings are not made at these times, rather, I make daily offerings of my favorite things. If I have a banana I give the Gods my favorite quarter, my daily apple, I give three slices, for the Gods, the Ancestors and the House/Landvaetir.  

While these are ritualized actions, they are not exactly the same as the formal high day rituals, the traditional blots and symbels that are normally seen within the germanic traditions.  

This is one of the reasons I’ve remained quite solitary in my practice over the years and remain a type of strange outlier in heathen communities, because a core element of the faith is about community. Still, I’ve always been an introvert, and something of a hermit. It’s difficult, nigh impossible for me to feel any connection to the divine in ritual gatherings, to the point where I feel as if I’m going through the motions, yet my heart and spirit are not connecting at all.  

However, when I recite my creed, utter my vows, and make my daily offerings that have become so normal it is almost casual...there is a connection there.  

“I present these offerings to you, My Gods, to the Ancestors, and to the Spirits of nature, earth and place. I’m thinking about you.”  

It’s dirt simple, but also honest and real for me. It’s how I experience the divine.  

This has led to existential crises in the past, as I’ve wondered if I’m on the right path, or if my faith is valid compared to other Heathens. Like everything in my life, I seem to have to do it my own way to function, which is why I’ve found great comfort in the diversity in the ways of our spiritual ancestors.  

Everything was different depending on where you went from funerary customs, to what ritual structures we’ve been able to devise. Far from having an overall homogenous structure, it is the heterogeneity that grants me comfort.  

The point of ritual, I feel, in all of its many variations and ways is akin to tuning a radio. The systems, routines, smells, sounds, and experience, position the spirit to encounter the divine but everyone’s spiritual radio is a little different which means there will always be outliers like me.  

This is something that the ancient ways seemed to account for well.  

This is where we get to heart of the matter. Our traditions are lived traditions where we seek to connect with the spiritual world around us. It is not about the forgiveness of sins committed, perfect obedience, or the following of a program.  

Our Gods call us to be ourselves, to boldly forge our own paths in life, and I think this does come all the way down to how we worship and approach them.  

We know we are doing it right when we come into a space where we can encounter them, no matter if that occurs in a high day ritual or a simple morning devotional.  

It is our path to wander, and our journey to discover.  

-Sister Snow Hare