Happy Solstice This Weekend AND Happy Father’s Day

Firstly, this weekend is one of our major holydays, the summer solstice. My household will be making offerings to Freyr, His Retinue, and Sunna and Her Retinue. (I’ll also be personally celebrating the anniversary of two of my ordinations so I make special offerings to the Gods in gratitude for the opportunity to serve Them thusly). For those who celebrate the Solstice, may it be one of health, healing, and abundance. 

One of the things we plan to do is to put up a shrine to Ask and Embla. We started incorporating prayers to them when we honored our ancestors at this past year’s Sunwait and it was such a tremendously powerful experience that I realized this was important, cosmologically important. Little by little, we’ve been collecting their shrine and I hope to raise it this Sunday. I had thought initially to include it – logically I think—with the ancestor shrines in our ancestor room (our ancestors stole my dining room lol. The whole thing is filled with shrines to our honored dead) but that didn’t feel quite right and the more we all meditated and prayed about it, the more it became clear that they should have their own separate shrine space. I have thoughts about where it’s going to go and once we install it, I’ll post pictures (I might wait till it’s all pretty. Lol. I like shrines to be offerings, to the best of my ability of beauty to the Gods and spirits. It sometimes takes time for a shrine to really come together aesthetically). 

Finally, it’s also Father’s Day this weekend. Fathers are important to maintaining healthy households and raising healthy children (this isn’t meant to take anything away from mothers and single mothers – moms are crucial too, obviously, but this weekend is about dads). So go give a thank you to the man who helped raise you, or to the father figure in your life (I realize not everyone has a positive relationship with their birth families). If one doesn’t have living father figures, it’s a good time to honor Father Deities.