QOTD

A friend sent me this quote today and it really speaks to me. This…this is precisely what preserving and nurturing our traditions is about. 

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” — Gustav Mahler

 

cool song

Something about this song reminds me of Odin…been obsessing over it the last few days. 🙂

 

at this moment

I am grateful to Hermes and Sigyn especially in moments of despair. One showed me the flaws and fractures in my faith and the Other how to restore and strengthen it. For small miracles and Their patience…I am grateful.

what’s it all about

Thinking on Odin today and ordeal and all the many places He’s had me walk in my life. There is a place in service to one’s Gods where everything else is stripped away. We’re not male or female or anything else, not black, not white, not skin, not bone, nothing but fire in the mouth of our God. It’s there that secrets open, Mysteries, there initiation happens. Make me fire in the mouth of my God, that is the prayer for the mystai, for those who seek to tear open their scars, so that their souls may be dragged out shrieking through that gash. And it happens. It happens through ordeal, it happens through so many other ways. This world is loud, it’s cacophony blinds the senses to the soul’s cry and blinds us to our Gods and sometimes it takes the press of pain and surrender, humility and ecstasy to mute that noise and raise us up to deepest communion with our Gods. Sometimes scars are too hard, a will too bent, to fierce, too raw…pain is the only one who can guide us through the barren lands to the place where immolation dwells. There are some places that cannot be reached by walking paths of light. Some require the terrible nourishment of darkness.

I met Odin when I hung for Him. It wasn’t about the pain. Pain is irrelevant. It’s a byproduct, nothing more. It’s the horse some of us ride to get across thresholds unapproachable by any other way. It’s never, ever about the pain. If this happens without pain all the better. But for some of us pain is our teacher, guru, and guide. Whether we will or no (but I so willed) he drags us across the gaping gaps that lead to those places our Gods dance in ecstasy, to those places where They rage and shriek and spit power weaving worlds. If you want it easy follow a God who left His place of pain. Odin is always there. Pain brings the humility one needs to be taken up by His ecstasy. Such a clever word that. It does not in any way imply the shattering ripeness, the furious violence, the orgasmic delight of His presence when it fills ever synapse, every atom, every molecule. We burn away in it happily. Let there be nothing between me and this God I love. Nothing not even myself. I am a living sacrament to Him and I was reminded today of what it means to bear His marks on every inch of my flesh. It is His calling card, a reminder to me that even His kindness comes with fury, and to others that what comes through my flesh is terrible danger. Human no more, I am marking time until I am no more, taken up fire on His tongue to be spat out in service. Unmake me, Oh my God, that You may restore again Your worlds.

I walk halls hallowed to another and I wait and twist and turn in an agony of suspense and for what? I have forgotten to Whom I belong. There is only one truth that matters, only one, One for Whom I should writhe and that is Odin and I will go where He will have me go, and do what He will have me do and I do not care for anything else. The meanderings of my still too human heart are nothing in comparison to His presence shrieking through my synapses whispering, laughing, reminding me of paths we tread long ago together. There is nothing but what He would have me do and where He would have me go. Step out of the way.

Pain teaches humility in the face of the Holy. May you eat of it, you who would mock holy things. May you be rung out in your human skins with it, who mock the Gods and Their works. May you learn. I do not care. They have reality for me, only those who likewise burn. I have no time for shadows. May you burn up in the light. May you be nourished by the darkness.

Happy Chinese New Year :)

Three new prayer cards by G. Palmer

These should be available in my shop as of late next week. 

Hodr by G. Palmer

 

Chantico by G. Palmer

Lucifer by G. Palmer

Two New Prayer Cards

Here are the two newest prayer cards. They will be available in my shop next week. 

Kuan Yin by G. Palmer

 

Eir by W. McMillan.

(and a huge thank you to all the wonderful artists with whom I work. You guys rock). 

Submission to Vesta’s Agon

 

“Vesta” by Lykeia

(This painting is for sale. Interested parties may contact Lykeia directly at daphne.kyrene @ gmail.com (remove the spaces around the @ sign first). The price is $275 + $15 shipping and handling. It will be shipped off frame in a tube for best pricing and safety. The painting is 20×24).

Submission to Vesta’s Agon

Eternal Fire
by Wynn Dark

Hail the holiness of hallows fire
kept burning through the long dark
by virginal hands.

Holiness that even the wolf children of the North
can understand, for you are a Lady
of the wolf children of the South ,holy Vesta.

Hail Vesta that both keeps and is that eternal fire,
hearth flame of the Roman people,
may your flame ever be kindled
in the hearts of Your people.

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