Species Lunation 3 – Iron

I wasn’t expecting to work with iron this month. I wanted to work with birch but iron decided to work with me and so I had no choice but to comply. I work well with iron tools, and I tend to keep at least one good iron pendant, usually a Mjolnir in my spirit-worker travel kit. It’s very good for warding off certain types of nature spirits, and other spirits too that may wish to cause trouble or mischief. I was always taught that iron isn’t very conducive to nature spirits in general, but then in the end, it too is of the earth and the mountains, and nature will reclaim it easily enough even so.  Iron and silver are two of my favorite metals with which to work when I do conjure, and when I need to choose a piece of sacred jewelry for protection. 

I don’t have much experience in actual smith-craft. I’ve made two knives, but the course was so disappointing (and the teacher so absent any sense of safety for the students) that I walked out before the class was done, a rarity for me. Still, those two knives remain, one gifted to my husband when we married and the other on my shrine to the duergar. They have a lovely sleek curve to them, and I made sure they were very sharp. I’ve worked with weapons – I studied iaido and kendo, kali, escrima, etc. learned how to shoot a gun, had a bit of archery (though not much). I know iron and its brother steel very well. It’s one of my favorite metals. I never gave it much thought as a mineral that we need to be healthy until this past season. 

I must note that I received an oracle at the beginning of the year that warned me if I didn’t make time to take a rest, the Gods would ensure that I had a rest. I’m just going to preface all of this with a sudden memory of that oracle, to which I should have paid far more attention!

On January 5, I did a new cleansing and purification charm and prayer. I had taken a terrible spiritual attack over thanksgiving (so bad that but for the grace of the Gods, my friend and I would be dead) and I wanted to be clean, really, really energetically clean moving into the new year. I had no idea how this would manifest. On January 6 I woke up ill, very, very ill (I won’t go into descriptions).  That continued pretty much daily for three months. I was taught that the first rule of spirit work is to check everything medically, even if one is absolutely sure the cause is spiritual. So, I went to the doctor for every imaginable test and as expected nothing amiss was found. The doctor even told me my blood work was better than his. Repeated divination told me to just calm down, that it was all the result of my purification work. Moreover, despite my symptoms, I felt fantastic, absolutely fantastic. I had more energy, my physical pain began to recede, old injuries began to release their painful hold. I found that as I prayed every day this same prayer, I began seriously healing. That was great. I couldn’t quite focus as I needed to for academic work due to some of my symptoms, but even with that, I felt better than I had in twenty years. When the cause of illness was found, it was found so quickly that I firmly believe it was miraculous. Hail to Bestla, Mother of Odin. Hail to Odin, Son of a ferocious Mother. Hail to Borr, Who teaches us to endure. Hail Them. 

For a time, I had to take iron tablets to combat what we initially though was anemia. This too was new and while the iron helped the exhaustion, it upset my stomach terribly. Fortunately, I only had to take it for about two weeks and my doctor told me I could stop. So instead, I started going weekly to a local sauna. It’s not a traditional sauna (I wish!) but an infrared sauna. Still, I would make offerings to the sauna spirit and then go for a half hour sauna and then a dip in cold water. During the sauna, I’d pray my daily prayer cycle. The results were amazing. Firstly, if I do a sauna, I ‘m done for the rest of the day. It cleans me out like nothing else and then knocks me out ,so I know to leave a lot of time to sleep afterwards. If I do a sauna with a sound bath included, I emerge high as a kite and need someone else to drive me home. The cold bath takes a bit of getting used to and I had to work up to it (I’m still working up to it LOL). Our traditional ways of cleansing and resetting the body – and within the Northern Tradition, sauna is certainly traditional – are more powerful than I realized. 

What does iron do in the body? It’s essential to life. It makes hemoglobin, that is our red blood cells. Those cells carry oxygen throughout the body (I’m getting most of this from the Mayo clinic). I had no idea how important it was! Signs of iron deficiency include: 

• Extreme fatigue
• Weakness
• Pale skin
• Chest pain, fast heartbeat or shortness of breath
• Headache, dizziness or lightheadedness
• Cold hands and feet
• Inflammation or soreness of your tongue
• Brittle nails
• Unusual cravings for non-nutritive substances, such as ice, dirt or starch
• Poor appetite, especially in infants and children with iron deficiency anemia

We mostly get iron from the foods we eat, and all of this has made me more mindful of what I’m putting in my body.  

In conjure, iron filings are used with lodestones, to feed them in spells of attraction, money, and luck. One can keep one of these charms going pretty much indefinitely so long as the lodestones are consistently fed with iron sand or iron filings. Iron is also used to ward off various evil spirits, ghosts, and malefica. This is why in Appalachia (and many other places too!), you might see horseshoes nailed, ends up so the luck doesn’t flow out, over the doorway and in some places, one would bury an iron knife right in front of the door to one’s house in order to ward off evil people and malefica. I firmly maintain my ancestral traditions. They knew things and one doesn’t change a practice until and unless one knows exactly what it does. 

This whole season has made me more respectful of the power of this mineral. It is that of endurance, of unbending, unyielding strength, and like my ancestors, I embrace its grit.