Happy Mother’s Day
To all the mothers out there: biological, adopted, spiritual; to all who mentor and act as mother-figures, to all women who step into this position out of necessity and strive to do their best: I honor you. Mothers for the most part are thrust into one of the most important positions one can hold: ferrying souls across the bridge into being and life, sheltering and nurturing those souls, raising them up rightly, piously, in love and care all the while knowing that they are inevitably making mistakes — there is no more difficult role, and it is a sacred one. Having children, raising a family is the marrow, the root, the absolute foundation for our traditions.
So, today I hail the women who do or have done this; and I hail the ones who have wanted to but for whatever reason have been unable to have children. May our Gods and Goddesses watch over you and inspire you.
I hail my adopted mother Fuensanta Arismendi Plaza. I miss her every day and every day I strive to live up to her example.
I hail my biological mother Mary Ann Dabravalskas (nee Hanna). I wish that we had had more time to get to know each other as adults and I wish you joy with the ancestors, and pray that should you reincarnate, it is into a loving, healthy family that recognizes you in all your goodness.
I hail the third mother that I had, my aunt Cindy, who loved me as a mother loves a daughter, and did her best to nurture and nourish my talents (especially my love of reading, writing, and books). I was so incredibly blessed to have had three mothers.
I honor my husband’s mother, Karen Shorie Lewis who raised up a wonderful, stubborn, and very loving man that I am proud to call my husband.
I pray that those who wish to become mothers and have struggled and experienced loss are nourished and given hope. May the Goddess Hlif be at your side. You too have held souls and possibly healed them on their way. You too are mothers.
To all those women who, like me, have not been called to this vocation, may you be nourished in the work that you do. This too sustains our traditions.
Happy Mother’s day.
A very nice article on the Goddess Coventina
I suspect She was more honored by Germanic tribes than we realize given that the make-up of the Roman legions at this time would have been good part German. She’s ours — and Her cultus a beautiful mess of Gaulish, Celtic, Roman, and German devotion. May She be hailed! I wish I knew Her more.
Forest Door has a lovely post in the species lunation series…
I started doing this because I was inspired by Dver’s work at A Forest Door. I haven’t had time to write mine up yet for this go-round, but please read her post. it’s just lovely and I have to say, I read them as much for the beautiful art pages at the end of each meditation as I do the words themselves. wow.
A Very Late Wodinic Wednesday
Hey folks, I’ve been running errands all morning and forgot to post this earlier. As always, I’m taking reader Q&A here in the comments section. Every Wednesday, or nearly so (last week was Walpurgis so I didn’t), I open this blog up for questions as an offering to Odin as Seeker of Knowledge. So, if you have questions for me on anything and everything upon which you think I might be able to proffer an answer, please feel free to post in the comments. I’ll keep this open until midnight EST tonight and I will answer.
be well,
G
Divination 3/4 done
I”ll be finishing the remaining five clients today so expect your divination results by early tomorrow.
Divination offered this week
I”m offering divination this weekend, through Sunday. No specific questions: I will divine and give you what I get. Usually I use three systems for this, per reading. This is more in depth than my runic “one and done” div. I will throw a combination of three different divination systems and give you a full report of what I receive. I charge $25.
If you have a specific question, I can divine on it but I have found the broad spectrum look that I get in my no question/three system practice to be better and more effective at getting a sense of what’s truly going on. Either way, if you have specific question, same cost: $25
I’m also offering my one and done rune div. same price and practice applies.
If interested, email me before 6pm EST on this Sunday. I’ll be doing the div that night. email me at krasskova at gmail.com and I’ll invoice you.
be well.
My general div set up for quick div and yes, there are sewing supplies in the cookie tin in the upper left lol.
General Update on Stuff & Things
I’ve had a number of questions about what I’m up to lately so here you go:
What am I currently reading?: I’m working my way through the wonder charm and prayer book Sannion compiled for me out of thousands of Norse, Germanic, Old English, Faroese, and other sources. Most of what I’m reading is academically focused: “Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew by Saint John Chrysostom,” (Matthew has an important passage relevant to eunuchs and eunuchs are relevant to my dissertation); “Contextualizing Gender in Early Christian Discourse: Thinking Beyond Thecla” by C. Stichele and T. Penner. I’ve read it before twice, but it’s an excellent study on the various lenses we can use to engage with a text. Finally, I’m about to start “The Gods of the Ancient Slavs” by Znayenko. I’m not holding my breath on that one – I suspect the scholarship is out of date, but who knows? I might be pleasantly surprised.
What am I watching?: America collapsing season 2024. *sarcasm* On tv we just finished the series “Fallout” and enjoyed that quite a bit. It had character arc for the main female character, which is so rare. We’re getting ready for the final season of “Evil”, though I do wish they’d have a Catholic consultant just once. Still, it’s entertaining. I like police procedurals so I’ve been really enjoying the show “Will Trent” and just started watching a new show called “Tracker.” Not sure yet about that one, but each episode is getting better and the characters more tightly written. As to movies, I loved the movie “Cabrini” though my one issue was that she wasn’t shown praying enough for an average lay person let alone a saint who spoke of the absolute necessity of prayer. I watched the 1973 “Wicker Man”, the perfect Beltane movie, on April 30th. That’s always an uplifting family film. I’m waiting to watch the movie “One Life” – it’s out now on prime but I know it’s going to make me cry.
What am I listening to? : I’m really enjoying The Long Dog Street Band. Sannion introduced me to their music awhile back and it’s potent. It has a very Appalachian vibe to it and some of their music reminds me of post-civil war ambience and melodies.
What am I working on academically? : I’m working through revisions on my dissertation proposal. I need to have it done in within the next couple of weeks. I’m also trying to keep my Latin and German up to par. I’m getting ready to teach a summer course on Ancient Christian Texts and I just finished a fantastic course on Christian Mystical Texts. I absolutely loved this class. I work at a university that requires two theology and two philosophy courses for every student. It’s part of their undergraduate core. The intro course is set (Faith and Critical Reason in theology or, I think, Introduction to Philosophy) but then students can choose from a large selection of courses in either field for their second requirement.
What am I doing for fun now? : I’m learning Ladino. It’s a language very much like Yiddish but instead of coming out of Germany and Russia, it was the language that developed amongst Jewish peoples expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. It has Balkan, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Portuguese, French, and of course a lot of Spanish influence and comes out of medieval Spanish. It’s fascinating. I’m doing a six week online course for fun and relaxation at the moment, but I plan to keep up with it after the course is over.
What’s up with my art?: I have two shows at the moment, one in Poughkeepsie and one in Beacon. Folks can follow my art adventures here.
What am I playing on guitar? : a lovely renaissance piece called “Spagnoletta” (anonymous) and a Baroque piece called “Canarios” by Gaspar Sanz. I also have a piece by Carcassi, but that, while lovely, is very much a type of etude and hard as hell. Lol. Then scales. Lots and lots of scales.
What religious writing am I working on: well, slowly, veeery slowly I have two projects in the works. One is a small novena book for Idunna. The other is a “basics of spirit-work” book, sort of all the things I wish I’d known before I started doing that Work. Both are going to take awhile because I’m focused primarily on academic work right now, which is also part of my religious work (Teaching is a service I give to Odin), and that’s eating up most of my time at the moment.
So what are you all up to? ^__^
My Ideal Education
Ok, so I posted this meme on Facebook and it’s getting a lot of play.
I thought I’d take the time to talk about what I consider my perfect educational model. Right now, in our current society, I favor homeschooling. I think it’s the only way to avoid indoctrination of one’s child, to instill virtue, piety, discipline, and also to provide the framework of a good, solid education. There are a ton of ways to do homeschooling: it can be a single family, or families can coordinate to have little pods of kids learning together. I would almost always choose homeschooling right now over any other educational method. If I had to create my own K-12 curriculum however – let’s do a thought experiment: let’s imagine we can do this for a newly formed school – this is what I’d do.
Firstly, home-ec and civics would be taught in every single grade (age appropriately). Home-ec would involve learning how to cook, sew, mend, budget, change a tire, basic home repair, how to shop on a budget, maintain a home, how to understand taxes, insurance, personal finance/investing, and things like compound interest (my god-daughter understood this at five). Civics is self-explanatory: it is a privilege to live in any community and young people should be raised with a sense of their responsibilities to that community. What does it mean to be a good citizen? We talk a lot about our rights, but not so much about our responsibilities. Part of civics is learning how our country was founded, why, and how our government works.
From K-12 I’d also have self-defense and shooting skills taught. (Think I’m crazy? Through the 50s, there were shooting clubs at school and kids routinely brought their guns. What changed? Not the guns but the society and its psychological lack of care for its people). There would be art and music classes, serious classes with each child learning at least one instrument as well. Art includes what we might term crafts, textile work, pottery, etc. in addition to art history, painting and drawing and each child would be expected to choose a craft upon which to focus, in addition to learning to draw and paint. Not everyone is going to be a Van Gogh, but the practice enriches their world and teaches them to appreciate art, you know, that thing that elevates our souls to the Gods. I would also start teaching them chess in kindergarten to hone their minds in strategy and critical thinking.
Also, from K-12, there would, of course, be classes in History, Mathematics, Sciences, Computers and coding, English – grammar and literature, creative writing, rhetoric (including how to judge sources for their bias or legitimacy, i.e. media savvy and critical thinking, also public speaking). In Kindergarten, I’d teach ASL. In first grade kids would start learning Latin and this would continue through graduation. In second grade, children would learn penmanship, cursive, and calligraphy – decent handwriting, the maintenance of which would be rolled into the rest of the curriculum. In this grade, a modern foreign language would be added (the kids can choose). In seventh grade, they take up ancient Greek; and in ninth grade, a second foreign language (again, the kids can choose).
Throughout K-12, there would also theology classes. How to read theologically. How to understand our cosmological stories, how to develop virtue and ethics. There would be religion classes focusing on polytheisms and how to cultivate devotion and piety, what to do in ritual, our sacred stories, etc. because this is my school, and I can do that. This would include participatory age-appropriate rites and pageants and such to make ritual engaging for them when small. In grades 9-12, children will volunteer at a local temple or with a local spiritual technician, but they can also take courses in comparative religions, ritual studies, ethics, etc.. I’d require yearly community service from Kindergarten, even if it’s something like cleaning up a park or visiting a nursing home. They need to be invested in where they live.
I’d do 4H things. Kids would have a community garden, bee hives, and a small selection of live-stock (chickens, goats) and they would learn to garden, and to tend and care for these animals and plants. As part of home-ec, they’d be learning food preservation as well. All of this can be made fun for the very youngest grades.
What would you add?
Bookversary! Feeding the Flame: A Devotional to Loki and His Family
Affiliate Advertising Disclosure
Originally released on April 28, 2008.
“Feeding the Flame” is a devotional anthology of prayers, poems, rituals, and more gathered from around the world in the honor of Loki and His family. In this book, readers will find not only Loki and Sigyn, but also Angurboda, Odin, Glut and all of Loki’s children equally honored. It is a celebration of devotional consciousness and an offering of love to a very complex family of Gods.
The book has been retired, and thus is out of print under this title, only available on the second hand market. Might I suggest you look to my omnibus devotional on Loki and his family, Consuming Flame. It includes the texts of “Feeding the Flame,” “Honoring Sigyn,” and “Sigyn: Our Lady of the Staying Power” with a significant portion of new material venerating Loki, Sigyn, Angurboda, and Their Children.
Gangleri's Grove 