#seven days of Lokabrenna

[mannazandwyrd]

Late August and early September in the Northern Hemisphere are packed with pagan harvest celebrations dating back several millennia: “First Fruits” festivals in valleys full of orchards; “Hops Hooding” shows where girls from brewing regions wear bowers of vines; competitions where ribbons are awarded for the biggest or least-blemished fruit; processions with hobby horses and elaborately-costumed dancers; rituals involving the last sheaf of grain and the alcohol made from the first of the harvest. In the early second millennium CE, among the city-dwelling early New Heathens of a pre-sea-swell late-capitalist society disconnected from the ancient agricultural calendar, a new harvest ritual spontaneously emerged that echoed prior lavish offerings of fruits and grains to the Elder Gods. It was called “Spongecake Day”. While its origins were lost with the drowning of the great digital libraries, in this essay, I shall discuss the

[elizatungusnakur]

So uh, to my own surprise, I won't even be taking part in my own creation this year, Seven Days of Lokabrenna.

Here's a blog post as to why that's happened.

(Spoiler alert: You don't have to do anything you don't want or need to do... 😉 )

[lokabrenna13]

So...

I had plugged my phone in next to my pillow to charge since I had been out much if the day. After dinner, when I went to retrieve my phone, I found a card not far from it. Odd for a few reasons. 1. I hadn't done readings there in a while, and the last reading I had done with this deck was outside. 2. I would have noticed the card before because it was right where I plugged my phone in... Anyway...

The card... The Page of Wands. Inspired, confident, creative, curious, enthusiastic, risk taker...

So I went to put the card back with the rest of the deck ... and hoping that none of my other cards were sneaking around. When I pulled the selenite and the rest of the deck from the bag, four cards were sitting on top of the deck face up.

The Seven of Swords (reversed). The Two of Wands. The King of Wands. The Moon. These cards hadn't been part of my last reading with this deck. I looked at the cards again. A number of the conversations I'd had with Loki and Lucifer were right in front of me in these cards.

Things aren't what they seem (The Moon and Seven of Swords). Some individuals don't really want you to succeed and aren't being honest about their intentions (Seven of Swords). Plan, experiment, explore, enjoy the creative process, but be careful who you share your plans with (When I'm excited about something I'm working on, I really love talking about it). Your work has been stolen before (Loki has been adamant about this for a while -- by the way, this is a summary, and despite how this reads, He really wasn't being condescending with me and never has been). A time is coming when you may need to defend your beliefs and your work (gladly...) (King of Wands). Present yourself and your work in with the same passion and enthusiasm that you put into your work. Trust your intuition (The Moon). Quite a bit is being left out for a reason. This is personal. However, this message could help others as well, so I'm sharing my story.

And... this is very important... Never lose your passion, enthusiasm, confidence, and curiosity (Page of Wands).

Deck: Runic Tarot

Artwork on the Tarot cards by Jack Sephiroth

Hail Loki! I love You! Hail Lucifer! I love You!

#tarot #tarotcards #tarotreading #tarotreader #tarotdeck #tarotreadersofinstagram #lokean #lokabrenna #loki #lucifer #lucifermorningstar #hailloki #haillucifer #godspouse #northerntradition #divinemessages #pagan

[bitter-sweet-farmgirl]

WIP Wednesday

Thanks for tagging me in this @dumbassunderthemountain​​!

Tags:  @luna-xial​​ @elvish-sky​​ if you want to participate!

It’s a bit hard to find something because I haven’t had time to write recently, and so have used up all my unposted stuff this past week, lol (gotta love college classes, amiright?)

But I found something in my files...  Introducing a Marvel-universe-based-oneshot from the perspective of Loki’s daughter (who doesn’t know who her dad is, mind you, and which I hope to finish one of these days, lol)--Signal Lost  (Title may change, this is a bit of a place-holder).

"Okay, Mom, you've got incoming bogeys on your seven and niner."  A tall, teenage girl with long black hair cascading down her back said into her headset, staring up at the array of screens before her.  Her piercing blue eyes flickered between pictures as she scanned the footage; watching as the robots were cut down by two welled aimed gunshots.

"Got them.  Thanks 'Brenna."  A female voice replied breathlessly.  The girl smiled to herself, continuing to survey the video footage on her screens.  Pressing a key, she switched between the cameras.  

"Another coming in on your six."  She said, pressing on her headset to active the mic.  "This one looks wounded."

The woman laughed, and in a moment a gunshot rang out as the robot dropped to the ground.  "Hopefully Tony and the rest have got the rest taken care of.  I'm about wore out with all this superhero stuff."  She chuckled, and the girl laughed along.

"You think sitting at a desk plotting battle tactics is cool, Mom.  How come you don't like the real thing?"  She asked, and her mom let out another laugh.

"It contains too much exercise for me.  I'm more inclined to the couch potato life, Lokabrenna."  She laughed, and the camera footage began to move.  "I'm going to go check in with the rest of the gang."

Lokabrenna nodded.  "Alright.  I'll switch the footage to your shoulder camera so I can move it around better.  That way I can watch your back."  She said, typing rapidly on the keyboard.  Instantly the screens changed to a view of the place her mom had just been; a smoking pile of rubble surrounded by metallic robot carcasses.

A grimace of disgust flashed across Lokabrenna's face as she surveyed the scene.  "Yuck.  I hate robots."  She muttered quietly, keeping a close eye on the shadows cast by the buildings.  Movement flickered in a dark corner and she squinted, trying to see better.  "Mom, you might have a bogey on your five.  MOM!"

The frantic scream left her mouth as a big black object with glinting blue eyes leaped out of the shadows, bounding rapidly towards her mother.  But before her mom could react--before the thing could even reach her--there was a crunching sound and the footage shorted out, leaving nothing but static.

"Mom?!  Mom, can you hear me?!"  She called frantically, pressing buttons in an attempt to restore the camera to working order.  

A long, loud beep began to echo through the room--sounding eerily like an EKG when a patient went into cardiac arrest--and Lokabrenna looked up at the screens in horror.  An error message had popped up on every single one, blinking repeatedly in big red letters:

...Signal Lost...

...Signal Lost...  

...Signal Lost...

To Be Continued...

[witchykohai-old]

lokabrenna part ii

songs that represent and celebrate Loki

can’t sleep, can’t breathe digital daggers | sound of change dirty heads | mouth of the devil mother mother | studying politics emery | the phoenix fall out boy | liar, liar a fine frenzy | smoke and mirrors gotye | vultures (photek remix) jess mills | waiting for the world to end mother mother | dog days are over florence + the machine | the cave mumford & sons | playing with fire emery | how the neighbourhood | you’re gonna go far, kid the offspring | hello, my treacherous friends ok go | battle for the sun placebo | seven devils florence + the machine | young volcanoes fall out boy 

[mannazandwyrd]

On a possible lost name of Loki:

I have speculated previously that, in order to incorporate new ideas into heathenry, we not only need to be reading current scholars’ work and revising our ideas to fit the currently available evidence into the Religion With Homework(™); we also need to find ways to evaluate unverified personal gnosis (UPG) and shared gnosis (SPG) from devotees for possible incorporation into new theology. With this blog post, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is.

I have a longstanding UPG (from multiple pendulum-and-alphabet-board conversations with Loki over the course of months, confirmed by other divination methods) that Loki was once also named ‘Aceilon’. Loki tells me it’s pronounced with a hard C, Ah-Keel-on. (Yes, I have very enthusiastic permission from the aspect of Loki who I interact with to share this ‘lost name’.)

There doesn’t appear to be a shred of independent evidence for that name ever being used (although perhaps I’m not looking in the right places). So, how does one evaluate this new piece of information?

Well, we could discard it immediately based on it being UPG. We could ask for independent confirmation from other devotees, which would make it SPG, still a fairly tenuous status.

Or we could measure it against what we do know about Loki. My last post looked at a number of possible etymologies of Old Norse ‘Loki’. (Probably not all those etymologies are completely sound. I am Not A Linguist and not able to evaluate them myself.) William Sayers, in “Norse ‘Loki’ As A Praxonym”, notes that many of the names of deities and other entities in Old Norse myths give us information about those who bear them.

So, if ‘Aceilon’ is a lost name for Loki, it should reflect Loki’s personality and other qualities in its etymology.

I’m not sure what language ‘Aceilon’ would be. It may have the form of a Continental Celtic god name, or one from an even earlier bronze- or stone-age culture. We do know that Norse mythology probably resulted from the meeting of multiple belief systems during the Migration Age or earlier, so a non-Germanic etymology isn’t out of the question, but it would still likely have a Proto-Indo-European root.

(‘Aceilon’ may be related in some way to the Greek mythical figure Achilles, but Old Norse ‘Loki’ likely predates Achilles’ stories, given that some of the proposed roots of ‘Loki’ are proto-Germanic… so I’m treating Achilles as a distraction.)

Let’s start with the suffix of ‘Aceilon’: -on as a suffix meaning “one who [preceding verb]” is currently found in French and was also used in Old French - possibly, via Ancient Greek, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-os (creates nouns from verb stems)) or a diminutive (in French, Old French); some of the French words with this suffix derive from *-onos, the corresponding Celtic singulative suffix (seen in some pre-Roman Continental Celtic male deity names, with -ona as the female form), which probably has the same PIE root.

Okay, so using that gives us a working hypothesis that ‘Aceilon’ means “One Who [Verb]s”, where the verb was ‘aceil’ or ‘akeil’ or ‘ceil’ or ‘keil’, or the root words that became those sounds. What survivals of such a verb could exist?

1. It could have survived in Gaelic as ceilidh, a party of neighbours with music or stories, which comes from an Old Irish word céile meaning companion, follower, or servant [fitting for the travel companion of Odin, Hoenir, and Thor, and for the plot-driver of so many stories]. The Old Irish word in turn comes from proto-Celtic *kelyos, further etymology uncertain but possibly from PIE *ḱey- ‘to lie down, to settle’ [which ties in with Sayers’ notes on Old Norse lúka as a root of Loki], which is related to PIE *tḱey- ‘to cultivate, to settle, to live’ and PG *haimaz ‘settlement, village, house, home’ [interesting in light of Eldar Heide’s discussion of Loki as a house/hearth wight or vätte].

2. It may have survived into modern German as keil ‘wedge, (heraldry) pile’, from protoWestGermanic *kinan, protoGermanic *kinana (split, crack open, germinate), from PIE *ǵeyH- (“to break open, germinate”). [Loki as a fertility deity, or the one who breaks open situations where there is an impasse?]

Keil is also a city in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, established as a Danish village on Kieler Förde (German) and Kiel Bugt (Danish, ‘Keil Bay’), a harbour on the Baltic sea, not far from Hedeby/Haithabu where worship of Sirius/Lokabrenna was recorded.

3. English ceil (as in conceal or ceiling) could be another survival, and things get quite interesting with its PIE root: *ḱel- (verb) to cover or (noun) incline, with the sense of a hill. [Loki as a chthonic deity, consistent with Liberman’s etymology of Loki.]

The following words all come from PIE *ḱel-:

- Ceil (English, Irish, verb) ‘to hide, conceal’ , from Old Irish ceilid, from Proto-Celtic *keleti; compare Welsh celu, Latin cēlō, Old English helan. [In Loka Tattur, Loki is the only deity who succeeds in concealing the boy to protect him. In addition to its meaning, Ceil is a homophone with seal, one of the animals Loki transforms into.

- Hel (Old Norse, Loki’s daughter and her realm) from *haljo (Proto-Germanic) ‘netherworld’

- Hella (Frisian), Hylja (Old Norse), and Hill (modern English) from *huljaną (Proto-Germanic) ‘to cover, veil’

- Holda (Old Swedish), Hallen (and thus Frau Halle?)(Low German), Halda (Old Norse) from *haldaną (Proto-Germanic) ‘to hold, to keep’ [Holda/Holle/Halle might be be related to Loki’s mother Laufey or daughter Hel, and a disguised Loki says “Let Hel hold what she has.”]

- Proto-Germanic: *helmô (handle or boat helm) [Loki steers/helms the ship in Loka Tattur and at Ragnarok]

- Modern English Hall (as in house) from PG *hallo [Loki as a hearth deity]

- Proto-Germanic *hēliz ‘deceitful, treacherous’ [Loki’s main attribute in Snorri’s Eddas]

- Proto-Germanic *huliso ‘case, covering, pod’ [the acorn Loki carries Idunn home in] and cognates in Italic languages meaning ‘outside, aspect, color’ [the gift Loki-as-Lodurr gives to humanity in the creation myth]

- Middle English helen (to conceal, clothe, shelter, protect, etc) from OE helan from Proto-Germanic *helana (“to conceal, stash, receive stolen goods” [Loki as thief of Freya’s necklace]

- Old Saxon helian ‘to heal, to cure, to save’ [Loki saves a child in Loka Tattur; there are some UPGs in the community of Loki as a healer but that’s not an attested description.]

- Old High German helen ‘to brighten’ [or illuminate, as with a (pine) torch - kenaz.]

- Proto-Germanic *hul(th)az ‘gracious, loyal, devoted, inclined toward’ [This could be Loki’s wife Sigyn’s description.]

- Old Norse kyllir (sack, scrotum), Latin coleus (testicles), via Greek [...and then Loki tied his balls to the goat.]

For transparency, I discarded modern English keel as a survival of the root of ‘Aceilon’ because its’ PIE root isn’t a verb, and modern French echelon because the sk- sounds in its linguistic roots didn’t match the sounds we need to find.

Without any cherry-picking I have found three possible Proto-Indo-European root words for ‘Aceilon’ that are verbs, with descendant words that can be used to describe Loki, and in one case a family member. Which suggests that ‘Aceilon’ may indeed be a lost name of Loki, and the UPG is worth sharing for further evaluation.

Hey mutuals who are linguists, please feel free to tear this to shreds. As I said, I am Not A Linguist, and I welcome your critiques. I’m really curious if any of these three proposed roots stand up to academic scrutiny, despite the weird circumstances around the proposed name’s emergence.

I do hope this exercise points toward ways that pagan monastics can evaluate and discuss the validity of devotees’ personal gnosis for inclusion in new theological writings.

[mannazandwyrd]

The Old Norse skalds treated dad-puns as high art.

No, seriously. Look at this incomplete list of possible etymologies for Old Norse ‘Loki’:

(PIE = reconstructed proto-Indo-European, PG = reconstructed proto-Germanic)

1. PIE *lok-, descendant forms include PG *lahaną, Old Norse lá; p. láðí, AngloSaxon leán

to blame, to accuse

Sayers’ main hypothesis: Loki ‘The Blamer’, an echo of the archaic PIE “poet of praise and blame”

2. PIE *lewg- (updated from *leug-)

to break

Past scholarship summarized by Bonnetain (quoted by Sayers), including by Pokorny. Loki ‘The Destroyer’

3. PIE *leu-, descendant forms include Norwegian lokk

to sound, to sing, to declaim

Pokorny and Kobler’s suggested root for Lóðurr, if like Hveðrungr it translates as “roarer” (mentioned by Sayers, but Wikipedia lists the etymologies of Lóðurr as Old Norse lóð "fruit, land", ljóðar "people", or laða "to attract"). (See Dronke or Þorgeirsson for evidence Loki and Lodurr are the same entity.). Lokk (in both forms of modern Norwegian) is, among other meanings, a special type of song used to call the animals home from their pastures; a herding call song. This ties in nicely with Loki-as-herder, mentioned by Heide: ganga sem [Loki]/[lok] yfir afra (Old Norse), ‘to walk like Loki over the fields’, driving [fleeing men]/[sheep].

4. Old Norse loca, possibly cognate with Old English loca (‘locked enclosure’), from PG *lukô, related to *lūkaną (“to shut”).

unenclosed piece of ground, cave

Past scholarship summarized by Bonnetain (quoted by Sayers). Loki bound in the cave.

5. Logi (and likely not Loki, according to current scholarship), from Old Norse loga

Fire, flame, to blaze, to burn

Past scholarship, originating with Grimm, summarized by Bonnetain (quoted by Sayers). Loki as fire itself.

6. Loptr, from Old Norse lopt, PG *luftuz. (PIE root uncertain)

Air, atmosphere, sky

Used to refer to Loki in both Prose & Poetic Eddas. Past scholarship summarized by Bonnetain (quoted by Sayers). Loki as the invisible man, a breeze, or wearing a Freya’s falcon-shape cloak.

7. PIE *lewk- probably via Pre-Germanic *lowkís and PG *laugiz (flame, blaze)

light, brightness, shining, to see

Past scholarship from multiple angles. *lewk- is probably the PIE root for: the names of Celtic Lugos, Lugh & Llew; Scandinavian Lucia/Lussi; Roman Lucifer (light-bringer, in devotee UPG Loki’s “brother from another mother”; Sophus Bugge’s theory that Loki derives *from* Lucifer has been discarded by current scholarship); Pre-Germanic *lowkís and PG *laugiz (flame, blaze); and words meaning ‘a clearing’ or ‘sacred grove’ in Latinate, Celtic, and Germanic languages including Old Norse ló (clearing, meadow, as in Oslo). Lokke lejemand (Zealand, Denmark) = ‘a reflected spot of light’ (Heide) may be evidence in favour. Loki appears to have been associated with the star Sirius (Lokabrenna), with fire or hearths (Heide), and his mother may have been an Earth goddess associated with a sacred birch grove.

8. PG lugô, from PIE *lewgʰ- (“to lie, tell a lie”)

to lie, deceive

Walde (1927-32) and Carnoy (1955) in a comparison with Odysseus, eviscerated by Liberman (1996). Loki as untrustworthy trickster.

9. Old Norse lúka (with dative lokit, past participle lokinn)... derives from PG *lūkaną (“to turn or bend”) or PG *luką (a lock or key-hole or knot-hole), both from PIE *lewg- (“to bend; turn”).

to shut, close, end, finish, conclude, settle (with a sense of negotiation and agreement)

Jacob Grimm first proposed; Liberman (1992, reprinted 1994, summarized by him 1996) uses Utgarda-Loki and lúka ‘close, lock up, bolt’ to say Loki meant ‘enclosure’ and he was a chthonic deity. Past scholarship (summarized by Bonnetain) is quoted by Sayers, then explored at length; he thinks these connotations of Loki ‘the Closer’, ‘Fixer’ or ‘Negotiator’ were added to later. Lokki (Faroe Islands), Lokke (Denmark; Hamar, Norway; and Sweden), Lokkemand (Jutland, Denmark), Loke, Luki, and Luku(r) (Telemark, Norway; Dalarna, Sweden; Swedish Finland) are linguistically related to Germanic *luk-, and Heide suggests these show Loki as ‘the Tangler’.

10. English luck, West Frisian lok, from Middle Low German (ge)lucke, from PG *galukją, from PG *lūkaną (“to close”), from PIE *lewg- (“to bend; turn”).

‘luck, fortune’

See previous table entry. Loki as lucky.

11. Old Norse laukr, from Proto-Norse ᛚᚨᚢᚲᚨᛉ (laukaz), from PG *laukaz.

Leek, onion

The above-ground parts of the leek appears to have represented rapid growth and fertility - see the alu-laukaz runic inscriptions - and was likely also used as slang for an erect penis. Loki as (chthonic?) fertility deity.

Presumably Loki began his career as only one of these, then started collecting. Which came first is a matter of open debate, and some of this list is a Real Stretch (tm). However, what all these options tell me is that the Old Norse skalds and their predecessors loved a good pun and gradually incorporated many sound-alike words into the stories of the gods. Like Loki flying through a key-hole to steal Freyja’s necklace for Odin. Or Loki hanging from Thor’s belt like a leaden plumb-bob measuring the water’s depth as Thor fords the river. I have a feeling Loki would delight in all that wordplay.

Citations:

Heide, Eldar. Loki, the Vatte, and the Ash Lad: A Study Combining Old Scandinavian and Late Material. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 7 (2011): pp. 63–106.

Liberman, Anatoly. Ten Scandinavian and North English Etymologies. alvíssmál 6 (1996): pp. 63–98. (Note: his etymological analysis of ON Loki was first published 1992, reprinted 1994, summarized by him 1996, and is likely also in his 2016 book.)

Sayers, William. Norse ‘Loki’ As Praxonym. Journal of Literary Onomastics 5 (2016): pp. 17-28. (Heavily cites Yvonne S. Bonnetain’s German-language thesis dissertation.)

Wiktionary, primarily in turn citing Guus Kroonen’s Etymological Dictionary Of Proto Germanic.

(Apologies, friends, my pretty table with all the cited etymologies linked and non-English words italicized didn’t survive copy-pasting into Tumblr.)(30 Aug ‘22 update: added links and fixed the date typo on Liberman’s book, additional information added to 2 and 4)

[mannazandwyrd]

I found something interesting night before last:

What is Aceilon, the possible lost name of Loki, doing in a 14th century Middle Welsh manuscript of a 6th-ish century praise poem? What’s my dang pendulum-dowsing UPG that I attempted linguistic analysis of doing in actual ink on vellum?

To figure that out I needed to dig a tiny bit. This is Yspeil Taliesin, leaves 62-63 or poem XXXVII in Llyfr Taliesin, which you can view digitally at the National Library of Wales’ website (link below). It’s one of several praise poems to Urien of Rheged, part of the earliest group of works in the collection, based on historical and linguistic evidence - scholars seem to think they were composed in Old Welsh or Common Brittonic and transmitted orally for awhile before scribes began copying and recopying it, with updates to language and accumulated transcription errors prior to the version that survived. It may have been composed by a historical poet Taliesin (who was later mythologized) or by a court bard using Taliesin as a persona. Lewis and Williams (2019) call this poem “a difficult text”, and note in their book introduction that allusions to mythology, historical events, and places can be very difficult for modern translators because so much early medieval information has been lost.

Here’s a terrible translation using Google Translate set to modern Welsh-to-English to help us pull the right part of the poem. Green highlights are untranslatable words.

By the time of Evans (1910), despite the wonky OCR in the first pic and my viewing it as a single word, Aceilon is being transcribed with a space in it, as ‘Ac eilon’ (ac meaning with). It was likely also treated this way for the public domain translation by Skene (1858) that’s available on the web. It isn’t considered up to scholarly standards, but here’s the same section:

Here is the same passage cited by Stookes (1954):

Here’s the same bit in Lewis & Williams’ (2019) translation:

I’ve not got my grubby paws on the recommended line-by-line analysis by Haycock (2007) yet, which may yield more insight. But it looks as though translators, not seeing Aceilon as a familiar word, divided it then pulled in the bard/poet/musician meaning, which traces to that proto-Indo-European root word that also survives in Gaelic ‘ceilidh’. There’s a lot of diversity in the translations, so it’s likely still being debated.

It might be that, if it’s indeed a single word here, Aceilon was being used as an allusion to a mythical court poet (Loki and Bragi both possibly being bards in Odin’s court).

References:

J. G. Evans (1910) text of the Book of Taliesin

National Library of Wales’s digital images of Peniarth MS 2 (Llyfr Taliesin)

W.F. Skene (1858) translation via Ancient Texts

S. Stookes ‘Before the Conquest’ Music & Letters, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1954), pp. 287-293

Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams (2019). The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain. London: Penguin Classics - available on Kindle.

Wikipedia’s “Book of Taliesin” article

[elizatungusnakur]

Who is Loptr? - Part One: Sublimatio

We have lift off! Here begins my #SevenDaysOfLokabrenna. ✨

[elizatungusnakur]

Who is ᛚᛟᚲᛁ ? – Part One: Laguz / Lögr

So begins my second half of #SevenDaysOfLokabrenna.

More conceptual art and prayer focused, if that’s your thing. Daily blogs from the region of Lombardia, Italy. ✨

[mannazandwyrd]

I am jumping in on @elizatungusnakur ‘s brilliant Seven Days of Lokabrenna devotional blogging exercise. I like that it’s easier to manage than a full month, although my 7 posts may not be on consecutive days, and I love that it’ll be like playing tag with my mutuals. For me, living at Latitude 52(ish) above the equator, I am guesstimating that Sirius A & B pop above the horizon of the Canadian prairies around August 23rd this year (2022), although it may in fact be a couple of days earlier depending on the calculators’ accuracy. It’s much earlier for Mexico and the United States, and later for those parts of Europe north of the British Isles. I have no idea how Sirius moves through the sky for the Southern Hemisphere. But it’ll be like the blog version of a relay race as various Norse pagans who interact with Loki and his friends and family join in the fun. I like the mental image of us passing the baton to each other.

I also like the wide open format, that you’re not guided with or limited by daily prompts. At first, I thought I might do seven posts about the runes, or seven days of the devotional fibre art I am making using various techniques. But I think instead my topic may vary from day to day.

Today’s topic: pagan monasticism.

Mutuals who are on Discord with me (heyyy gang) know this topic has been much on my mind lately; a few of us have read the essay collection edited by Janet Munin, we discussed it in our book club, and two of us are currently in John Beckett’s course on the topic. (Those essays vary in quality but all provide food for thought on what a devotional polytheist’s practice could be. I’d recommend the course for anyone who processes information through audiovisuals better, or who hopes to plug into a community of like-minded people, but so far it hasn’t offered many ideas beyond the book.) For the past couple of months I have been writing and refining my plans for how my version of inclusive norse heathen monasticism might work in practical terms. When I checked in with Loki by divination, he was insistent that this should be my first topic.

Many modern Catholic and Orthodox monasteries in North America have downsized from large campuses to a single house shared by a handful of monks or nuns, not so different to how the (fascinating) medieval Beguines lived. That downsizing made me think about how a pagan monk or nun - or a group of two or three - could convert a typical urban or suburban home into a live/work space, and then combine their devotional/contemplative work as an artist or writer with teaching workshops or facilitating retreats on their areas of expertise. I'm not yet at a life stage or level of expertise where I can do this myself, being married with teen kids and elderly parents and in-laws who could need caregivers, but my husband and I will likely in the next decade or so be empty-nesters with spare bedrooms, so I plan to work toward that goal and level of expertise.

This idea seems like an easy-to-reproduce and versatile way to create small-scale pagan sanctuaries, so I am sharing it here. Some of you may be able to adapt it to suit your own practices.

In my case, my suburban-retrofit mini-monastery will be Roasted Heart Fibre Arts Studio & Sanctuary, a contemplative space that offers a full suite of fibre artists’ tools, workshops on fibre arts (and related disciplines like seidr), and a stacked library of reference materials. The arts can help keep it going, and residencies could require the visiting artists to teach a workshop and/or create a body of work. Alternatively, visiting artists could be advanced students looking for mentorship in skills the permanent residents teach. The space could also be a community hub for events and daytime workshops. In my personal practice, I’d like to pair my textile art with work to mitigate the climate crisis’ effects (the focus of much of my volunteer work already), and to develop pagan monasticism and theology.

As an aspiring polytheist monastic, I strive to embody my deities’ values. I can live my life as an example, and I can be my deities’ hands in this realm, in addition to offering them my head and heart.

This, I think, is my answer to John Beckett's question, "What about monasticism calls to you?" I'm already a devotional polytheist and deity-partnered with an evolving lifetime vow, so using what abilities I have to help my pragmatic, opportunist, loving deities do work that needs doing, in service to communities of various types (local and nonlocal, human and other-than-human) — it feels like a logical next step to studying lore, runes, and seidr in my role as a vitki-trainee for my local kindred. It’ll allow me to continue to deepen my spiritual practice while integrating devotional textile art and fibre magic seamlessly into my artistic practice.

For accountability and mutual support I will share my to do list here:

1. Mundane before magical: I need to declutter my home and my life in preparation for this next phase, and years living in the same home with children means lots of accumulated stuff to sort and donate. I think I’ll take a Konmari approach to it, which will help me strengthen some animist thought patterns too. Knowing my long-term goal should make this process easier - but it’s an ongoing elephantine task to tackle one bite at a time.

2. Study and practice. I am in the process of getting certified as a textile arts instructor in my primary technique (hand-hooked rug making, like many textile arts, emerged from the Arts & Crafts movement with a guild-based training and mentorship model). I am also at beginner level in other techniques I want to incorporate into my artistic and devotional practices. I need to set aside a little time each day for handwork.

3. Study and contemplate and practice. My current focus is still the runes, but soon I will be finished version 1.3 of the rune card project and able to shift my focus to reading all the books and academic articles I have been collecting on seidr. I am also assisting my gothi with updating study circle notes, participating in a couple of local and online study circles, and reading books on lore. I need to set aside time each week for reading, writing. and integrating new (to me) information into my practice.

4. Prayer and meditation and connecting with Deity. Right now, almost three years into my path, the Gods are never far from my thoughts, and all my meals and daily activities are offered to Them in one way or another, but I don’t have a particularly disciplined day-to-day schedule — so I need to develop and gradually add to that. The beginning of my kids’ schoolyear seems like a good time to work on adding new habits. The seasonal rhythm of worship is already part of my practice, as I have from the outset tried to build a bioregional and garden-witchery version of a Nordic wheel of the year for myself, and I now have local community in addition to online community to do ritual with. But I would like to deepen that, too.

5. Developing a simple pagan monastic habit / wardrobe. I have experimented with slow fashion and wearing a capsule wardrobe previously, so as I declutter my closet I will be drawing on that experience (I recommend Project 3/33 to anyone wanting to give a capsule wardrobe a go.). I already have some ideas about this: modern, pragmatic, unisex, partially handmade from zero-waste sewing patterns, in natural fibres, with inspiration from the past. As an artist, the utility of workwear and artists’ smocks with deep pockets is appealing; this could be adapted from a medieval tunic, or the tunics already in my closet. As a protester, I am aware that sometimes you need to blend into a crowd in solidarity rather than stand out, so clothing reflecting that modern reality seems necessary, and I already live in t-shirts and jeans. For ritual, I am working on a modern version of a Skaldenhamn hood for cool days, and a hand-dyed linen duster coat of a type popular among textile artists but reminiscent of the Vendel-period klappenrock riding coat.

If you’re interested in following along as I explore a polytheist monastic path, I will be tagging all my posts on it with #monkposting as well as tags already in use by the community.

XO Eira

[elizatungusnakur]

‘Who is Loptr? - Part Three: Scintillae’

This one was just wild… ✨

Follow along for Day Three of #SevenDaysOfLokabrenna.

[elizatungusnakur]

Who is ᛚᛟᚲᛁ ? – Part Three: Kenaz / Kaun

Devotional artworks, quotes and prayers for #SevenDaysOfLokabrenna - blogs from the region of Lombardia, Italy. ✨

[elizatungusnakur]

‘Who is Loptr? - Part Two: Pneuma’. ✨

An odd choice… and then it wasn’t.

Read along for day two of #SevenDaysOfLokabrenna.

[elizatungusnakur]

Who is ᛚᛟᚲᛁ ? – Part Four: Isa / Isaz

Devotional artworks, quotes and prayers for #SevenDaysOfLokabrenna - blogs from the region of Lombardia, Italy. ✨

[elizatungusnakur]

Who is ᛚᛟᚲᛁ ? - Part Two: Othala / Odal

Devotional artworks, quotes and prayers for #SevenDaysOfLokabrenna - blogs from the region of Lombardia, Italy. ✨