Happy International Women’s Day

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image from Montessori site here. I really like the image.

Today, perhaps take a moment to thank the living women who inspire you, and honor those who are now ancestors. I honor Ask, Embla, and the first named Holy Power in our cosmology: Auðumla. I honor first my Disir, and the mighty tribal Mothers of my lines — Lithuanian, Swiss, German, Scots-Irish, Huguenot French. I honor my mothers: my adopted mom, Fuensanta Arismendi Plaza (sancta), and my biological mother, Mary Ann Hanna Dabravalskas. I honor my grandmothers: Linnie Shoff Hanna and Ursula Blazis Dabravalskas. I honor my great grandmother’s: Edna Baldwin Armiger, Lucinda Heffner Schoff, Anna Aviza and Eva Dabravalskas. I honor my great-great grandmothers: the Lithuanian great great grandmothers whose names I do not yet know and Catherine Runkle Heffner and Mary Jane Adams, Jane Newhouse Baldwin and Elizabeth Johnson, and I honor my great great great grandmothers: my Lithuanian ones whose names I do not yet know and Elizabeth Oberlander Runkle, Harriet Frazer, Jemima Yokum and all the preceding generations in my line, all the mothers and all the women who endured. 

I honor those dancers who inspired me and guided me in my first career, who have a place on my ancestor shrine now: Marie Salle, Marie Camargo, Marie Taglioni, Fanny Essler, Fanny Cerrito, Anna Pavlova, Olga Spessivtseva, Maria Tallchief, and more. I don’t mean to omit anyone, but I so rarely parse them out by gender! I give thanks to those writers who have given me comfort, especially Jane Austen, whose work I turned to when I learned my mother was dead. I know I’ve forgotten names that I would like to have here. I’m sure I have forgotten names amongst the living below but you are not forgotten in my heart.

I honor those living women who are fighting in the Ukraine and those who are not on the battlefield but who are fighting to sustain their families. Slava Ukraini. Always.

I honor those living women who inspire me, my teachers and  in academia, especially Christine H. and Sarit KG, and Sue P. I honor my closest friends,  Mary Ann, who always inspires me in my art and encourages me in my work (and who, though not a spirit worker herself is damned fine ground crew), Wyrd Dottir, whom I’ve known since she was in college and who always challenges and supports me in my work, and Tove, assistant, devout Freyja’s woman, and my sister-in-law. 

I honor so many of you, my readers, who have inspired me.  And…there are too many female friends and readers to count. Know that I hold you in my mind and heart on this day. ^_^

Finally, I honor my students, past and present: I pray daily that you have what you need to be courageous, that your thought-worlds ever be large, and that you find your joy and follow it. You inspire me, and teach me every bit as much as I teach you, and I thank you (this is true of my students regardless of their gender, but today is women’s day).

May you all be surrounded by love and gratitude today, by friendship, happiness, goodness and blessings. 

I also remember those Goddesses Who have shaped and formed me: Sekhmet, Sigyn, Frigga, Freya, Oshun, Sif, Idunna, Ostara, Skadhi, Pudicitia, Pomona, Pietas, Eir and so many more, with deepest devotion and gratitude. Tonight will be a night of offerings and thanks. 

This card is available here. This shop is just lovely and sells many prayer cards and other types of devotional art. I highly recommend it.

Sunwait Week 1: Sunna in Fehu

For those who don’t know, Sunwait is the period six weeks before Yule where we honor Sunna (our Sun Goddess) weekly and slowly make the descent into the rich, dark, liminal period of the winter solstice. This year we made the decision to also hold Sunwait before the summer solstice: as yule is a going down into the darkness, so the summer Solstice is a coming up into glorious light. There is a powerful parallel there that we intend to explore. This year is also the first year since our household has been keeping Sunwait that it fell on Remembrance Day (1). We honored Sunna but we also honored our military dead, particularly our WWI dead, but also all of our fallen soldiers. Their presence bracketed our rite and provided an honor guard for this Goddess Who shepherds them all into the ancestral havens.

We exchanged small gifts at the end of the rite, after the horn – representing Urda’s Well – had been passed and round after round of prayers made. In a formal symbel, (which we did not do tonight!) there is almost always an exchange of gifts toward the end of the passing of the horn. It felt right to do this tonight, even though it was not a symbel. This gifting set the tone for the season, one of love, care, luck, and generosity and the giving of gifts mirrors in microcosm the enormous generosity of the Gods at the moment of creation. It mirrors all the gifts that They poured into creation, and into the hands of the first human beings and every human after (2).

Here is the prayer that we offered tonight, a prayer for the first week of Sunwait, with Sunna triumphant in fehu.

Prayer to Sunna as She Comes in Fehu:

Fehu is light, strength, and luck.
It flows from Audhumla, the sacred cow,
partaking of the power of Holy places,
potentiality and the Gap.
Fehu crowns You, oh Sunna,
emanates from and around You.
It fills the heavens in wake of Your passage.
You soar across the sky:
scattering luck and dripping healing power
ever as the wheels of Your chariot turn.
Hail oh Gracious Goddess,
Glory of Mundilfari’s House.

You, Holy One, make Your journey across the sky
and then You journey too beneath the earth.
Your light, and fehu burning brightly,
guides the souls of the dead to their rest.
You take special care for soldiers,
especially those not claimed for Valhalla’s Hall,
especially those not heading for Folkvangr,
but to the loving embrace of their dead.
You seek out those most lost, hurting, or broken,
and no soldier waits for Your arrival.
Your gentle, healing touch is always there.
You are the great Psychopompous,
before Whom all doors open,
all bridges may be crossed,
in Whose wake, all darkness
turns to light.

Hail to You, Oh Sunna,
Protectress of our honored dead,
Guide and Guardian of our soldiers,
Mighty Power,
Shining Warrior of Mundilfari’s Hall.
Hail on this, the first night of Sunwait.

 

Notes:

1. Sunwait may be celebrated on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday – ironically I have never known any House to keep this day on Sunna’s actual day of Sunday. Our House chose Friday years ago, because it’s a nice way to end our week. I think, from everything that I’ve seen, Thursday is probably the most popular day for the Sunwait rites but ymmv.
2. In formal symbel, gift giving also recognizes and reifies the often hierarchical relationships and bonds between members of the House (and all the obligations and responsibilities therein), but that is not where we took it tonight.

The shrine about an hour before we began our rite — we did this one in our living room rather than the temple room.

Here is a close up of the shrine — the small glasses are for our military dead. I later added a bowl for them too (They got a huge bottle of vodka. We gave Sunna a nice bottle of wine). The horn here belonged to my adopted mom, as did the round candle holder in front of the six-candle Sunwait candle-holder.

Upcoming Online Class Offerings

I’ve gotten comfortable enough using Zoom over the last couple of years, that I’ve decided to offer a couple of workshops and classes via zoom. The first round will be in January. Here is the information for the upcoming January Class. I”m going to start with one class and see how it goes.

 

Class 1: Getting Started with the Ancestors
Dates: Friday nights, 6-8PM EST January 5, 12, 19, 26.
Cost: $150 classes are capped at 8 people, because in smaller classes we can really engage deeply.

This class will meet face-to-face via zoom and will explore everything one needs to know to get started in honoring one’s ancestors. We will look at

* ritual practices including setting up and actively maintaining the ancestor shrine,
* dealing with damaged, angry, or wounded dead, ritual elevations,
* the purpose of purification practices,
* the when, how, and why of venerative protocols,
* practical aspects to ancestor veneration like how to get started researching one’s dead.
* Finally, I’ll discuss potential pitfalls and important troubleshooting techniques.

This class will prepare the newcomer to our traditions to begin one of the most important aspects of polytheistic practice: getting one’s ancestral house in good working order. For those that already honor their dead, this class will help fill in the gaps.

I’ve already had significant interest in this class so if you’re interested, please register sooner rather than later. Email me at Krasskova at gmail.com to reserve your spot.

Over the summer, I’m considering teaching the following classes:

1. Introduction to Heathen Cosmology: Exploring our Creation Story
2. Developing Divination Protocols
3. Runemal: Working Through the First Aett
4. Exploring the Bacchae and the Mysteries of Dionysos (I did do my time in Classics after all and I live with a Dionysian. ^^ This is my favorite mystery play).
5. The Basics of Devotion

Please let me know which ones you are the most interested in. I will only be offering two over the summer and I haven’t yet decided on which two.

Cat wearing glasses reading a book. He is an awesome (Paw-some?) cat.

Preparing for Veteran’s Day/Remembrance Day

November 11 is Veteran’s Day– Armistice or Remembrance Day in Britain. This began as a day to remember those who served and died in World War I. In the US, it has become a day to remember our living veterans of all our wars, as well as those who died in WWI. This is a holy day as far as I’m concerned. We live in the tatters of a world shaped and defined by what happened from 1914-1918, though in the US at least, there isn’t even a national memorial for that particular war. We didn’t lose as many people, not even as close as Britain and France (though we did send an expeditionary force to Europe under General Pershing over in 1917. My 1stcousin twice removed private S. Wesley Heffner (30 April 1898-June 1918) died in France of injuries sustained in battle. I remember him every November). In Britain, entire villages were emptied of men. It cost the UK an entire generation and devastated Europe. Young men tended to enlist together, and villages were posted in the same battalions together so when those battalions fell in battle, they took the men of entire villages and towns with them.

America doesn’t do anything approaching enough to honor this day. The president may lay a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington Cemetery. Individual towns may have small ceremonies at their local American Legion halls but we no longer have large, city wide parades, or events. We have chosen to forget, and this is shameful. Maybe if we remembered and honored a bit more assiduously, we wouldn’t be so quick to go to war, or so slow to intervene when it is right to do so.

The UK is also having problems this year. In London, numerous Pro-Palestinian groups have decided to hold marches on Remembrance Day. I’m sure we’ll see the same type of garbage here. In this, I don’t care if a march is Pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israeli, or Pro- anything else: it is inappropriate to hold such a thing on a day given to remember our honored dead, especially our WWI dead. Their ghosts still haunt London. You can sense them, feel them in the streets, right along with the ghosts of WWII holding us, their descendants accountable. To do this on Remembrance Day, to hold these pro-Palestinian marches (or any other kind of march that isn’t dedicated to remembrance) is disgusting and gross. Personally, if a group decides to march on Veteran’s Day/Remembrance Day, I’d like to see forcible police action, arrest, and frankly, I’d strip the ingrates of their citizenship and remove them from the country. Or conscript them and send them to the front line of any pertinent war. Teach them a lesson about why we should be grateful to our military dead.

To insult the dead that gave their lives that we might live in freedom is …I don’t have words for how abhorrent that is, especially on Armistice Day. It’s utterly revolting and if the police won’t handle the ingrates, then I hope the people themselves do. That we allow any other type of march to occur on this day shows the utter lack of respect with which we hold our military dead.

I’ll close with a stanza from Binyon’s poignant tribute to the WWI fallen:

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

It is our privilege and our obligation to remember and with remembrance to carry in our hearts reverence. Always. If we can’t do that, what a pathetic generation of human beings we are.

 

Happy Samhain/Winternights/Dia de los Muertos

This series of holy days — for us winternights— marks the transition into winter, the year-end liturgical cycle (from here we move into sunwait, and the intercalendary days of yule culminating in the New Year). My house usually celebrates from October 27 through Nov. 1 though this year we are doing smaller rites out of necessity (I was traveling at the beginning for work).

This is a time to honor your ancestors and other beloved dead and to think about the Gods who guide and guard them, Who govern this time, Who pluck fate and collect the fallen. It is a time to contemplate one’s own mortality, and what we are doing to be good ancestors too. What is it that we leave behind? Most importantly, it is a time to feed and feast the dead, to celebrate their lives, tell their stories, lay out offerings and celebrate those we love, those we honor, those who inspire us, who are no longer here. May all our honored ones be hailed.

As I write this, it is freezing cold outside, and the height of autumn’s multi-colored loveliness has shifted to something that carries just the faintest whiff of winter, of ice, of darkness. Our dead come first to prepare the way and then we take the not-so-long trek into the mysteries of Yule.

I wish you all a very happy Halloween.

A Cool Way to Research Your Ancestors

There’s a genealogist who runs a 52 Ancestors in 52 Week challenge and with our ancestral liturgical period upon us (and indeed all the ancestor holy days literally a week away), I wanted to share this with folks. You can see the challenge here. She’ll probably repost about it closer to the New Year, possibly with new categories for each week, but this gives you a bit of a head start and you can always do this on your own using the 2023 categories if you don’t want to wait, or want to start next week. I did it one year and found it very, very helpful in learning more about and connecting with my dead. It was also a lot of fun.

A third of my own ancestral shrine, photo from 2021 (it’s all been rearranged by now! I do that every quarter.)

Some Days…

Every morning, before ten am, I take the omens for the day. I want to know, in good Roman terms if the day is favorable (fas) or unfavorable (nefas) and to what degree. I rely on the birds quite a bit for insight into this process – they’re terrible gossips and I take full advantage of the fact. Today was unfavorable. That’s annoying, but ok. It might mean any number of things: pain levels might be unusually high, there may be vexations, things might not work, things might break, and most importantly of all: if unfortunate things happen, it will be harder to turn the day to one’s advantage. Usually on nefas days I hunker down and just stick close to home but today I have to head to work. I’ll make extra offerings, extra prayers. The Romans were sensible: when a day was nefas, no business was conducted. 

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from this is to be patient when things aren’t working out. Come sundown, the day with all its sacred inflections has come to an end and I have a bit of a breather before Dagr rides across the sky heralding Sunna’s coming at the next dawn. I can take stock and evaluate my work, my responses, my behavior, how various omens played out throughout the day, where I might have interpreted less accurately, where I was spot on, what I’d like to do differently, or what I did that worked really well, and how it all feels. That way, I can recognize these things later and course correct more efficiently without having to do a full intellectual analysis of the whole process each and every time, especially when sometimes, one must act quickly.  

Today has been particularly strange already. Yes, my pain levels have been high and perhaps that’s why, along with various conversations yesterday, that my time in ballet has been on my mind this morning with a keen, sharp pain. I miss it. I miss entering into the precincts of the sacred in the way that I was able to do when I was dancing. I miss touching the Holy in the way I did when I could move and soar. I miss the deep accomplishment and pride of making a body in pain productive, and not just productive but productive of beauty. I miss the state of being that was two parts agony one part exaltation, with a dash of deep, bone-weary satisfaction all rooted in hard, sweaty work. It’s like being turned inside out sometimes when the longing comes on me like this. It’s a holy longing and all I can do is give thanks to my Gods and spirits, breathe, and center myself, and allow the memories to flow through my body, where my bones remember what it was like once, long ago to be so physically connected to that lineage and its ancestors. I am grateful, and sometimes gratitude comes with a sweet, dark pain unlike any other. I am truly, deeply grateful for my Gods and all the gifts They’ve poured into my hands. 

Holy longing (1) opens one up and while it renders one vulnerable, it also brings with it a deep joy. It’s a very fruitful river in which to swim. So today, I will hold the memories of my time in ballet close to my heart, cherished and dear. I will give thanks to my Gods for having led me into that crucible and formation, and I will give equal thanks to the lineage ancestors, dancers long dead, who inspired me and shepherded me, who receive honor on my shrine, and who remained caregivers and teachers in the world that I learned to inhabit. I will also thank my body, the bones and tissues, muscles, tendons, and ligaments that carried me through from child to dancer, from dancer to priest, from priest to spirit-worker, to teacher, to being who I am today and who will become tomorrow. 

I will embrace this state of holy longing and see where it takes me. 

Notes: 

1. Holy longing is perfectly normal. Usually, it’s when you see something in another’s religion that you really appreciate and sort of which your religion had – even though you are satisfied with your own tradition and choice.  Again, it can be very, very fruitful, both increasing one’s appreciation of other traditions but even more importantly, helping one to go more deeply into one’s own. 

Never, Ever Disavow Them

Today, I was listening to YouTube videos while I did the dishes, just letting them auto-play one after another. I wasn’t really paying much attention, mostly just using them as background noise while I worked when I heard a woman talking about her experience teaching a summer program (I think it was a summer program. I wasn’t paying close attention at first). I went from zero to sixty in utter rage when I heard her say that, during orientation, her co-workers had made all the white teachers stand up and disavow their ancestors. This is all in the name of racial awareness and equity. I couldn’t believe that any thinking person would actually DO this, no matter what pressures that person might face from those around them. I was beyond horrified and then disgusted and then really, really angry. When someone tells you to disavow your ancestors, stand up straight and tell them to go fuck themselves. Then pray or purify because whatever asshole suggested this, is attempting to get you to engage in something evil. 

Let me be perfectly clear.  I don’t care if you are white, black, brown, or any other color, race, or ethnicity, never, EVER, EVER spit in the face of your ancestors like that. There is no living person, no ideology, no political position important enough to do that to your spiritual house. Asking someone to do that is flat out evil. I don’t care if the person doing the asking says it’s for racial justice, gender equality or any other reason. It is reprehensible. Such actions are not symbolic. They are disgusting, and they resonate deeply into one’s soul, wyrd, and spiritual health. 

I will stand with my ancestors. I will honor them now, today, tomorrow, and always. I will tell their stories. I will pour out offerings to them and I will teach others to do the same. I hope that others have the courage to spit not on their ancestors but in the face of anyone asking them to do something so vile as to publicly stand up in disrespect for their dead. Good, bad, beautiful, or ugly, we are here because of our ancestors. We stand on their shoulders. They are our greatest strength and protection. The least we can do is show them a bit of respect. 

I’ll close with something I wrote in my book Honoring the Ancestors: 

“None of us walk alone. Wherever we go, we go with a retinue of our ancestors at our back. When I bow before my altar, my entire lineage all the way back to the beginning bows with me. To connect rightly and properly with one’s dead, to engage them well and consistently is to know that when you act, ten thousand hands and hearts, minds and wills act in tandem with you. That is the power of ancestor veneration. 

Something that just hit me now, retelling this: when you honor your dead with awareness and commitment, you’re helping your ancestors honor their ancestors too, you’re taking part in a spiritual cycle going back to the beginning of human evolution and probably farther (we don’t know anything about the spiritual life of non-human beings on this earth). That’s something terribly profound.” (p.37)

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In Remembrance and for our Veterans

In Flanders Fields – by John McRae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
        In Flanders fields.