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Yuletide Shopping Guide 2023 – Part Seven
I created the Yuletide Shopping Guide in part because Yule is one of my favorite times of year. On this last entry, I wanted to shamelessly spotlight my own books for your consideration, especially since one of my publishers, Red Wheel Weiser, is running a 30% Off Sale.
Affiliate Advertising Disclosure
Red Wheel Weiser Books
If you haven’t picked up my books “A Modern Guide to Heathenry: Lore, Celebrations, and Mysteries of the Northern Traditions,” “Living Runes: Theory and Practice” and/or Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner now is the perfect time! Click on the link and use code RWW30 at checkout (offer good for a limited time). You can currently enjoy 30% OFF direct from the publisher’s website: redwheelweiser.com. Please note that this deal only applies for orders being shipped for delivery to the United States.
As a reminder, my book A Modern Guide to Heathenry (2019) takes what I created in Exploring the Northern Tradition: A Guide to the Gods, Lore, Rites, and Celebrations from the Norse, German, and Anglo-Saxon Traditions (2005) as a foundation and significantly expands upon it with more than 70,000 words of new material especially on devotional work, honoring the ancestors, and theological exegesis. It’s basically twice the word heft of its predecessor! Living Runes: Theory & Practice, however is a re-publication under a new title of my earlier work Runes: Theory and Practice book.
Other Assorted Books
Amazon will have the most comprehensive selection of my written works, including a number of devotionals and novenas.
Among my books, which ones do you most love? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Bookversary! Honoring the Mothers
Affiliate Advertising Disclosure
Originally published December 13, 2016.
| “Honoring the Mothers: Novenas to the Mothers of Our Gods and Heroes” is a collection of novenas to ten holy women, mothers of heroes like Achilles and Perseus and Gods like Hermes and Dionysos. These mighty women received cultus in the ancient world. They were reverenced, honored, venerated. This novena booklet provides a starting point for those wishing to honor them today. |
Buy now at amazon.
Bookversary – In Praise of Hermes
Affiliate Advertising Disclosure
First published on September 9, 2016.
“In Praise of Hermes” is a novena booklet to the Greek God Hermes. It provides an introduction about this God and nine days of prayers in His honor.
Don’t have a copy yet? Get it from amazon, or through other booksellers.
Bookversary: Honoring the Mothers
Honoring the Mothers made its initial debut on December 13, 2016.
“Honoring the Mothers” is a collection of novenas to ten holy women, mothers of heroes like Achilles and Perseus and Gods like Hermes and Dionysos. These mighty women received cultus in the ancient world. They were reverenced, honored, venerated. This novena booklet provides a starting point for those wishing to honor them today.
Available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2htKzyB
Bookversaries!
Affiliate Advertising Disclosure
I’ve been distracted by the start of the new school semester, and as a result I missed a few bookversaries in the last few days.
- September 6: By Scalpel and Blood, Herb and Healing Hands: A Novena to the Goddess Eir
- September 9: In Praise of Hermes
- September 10: Heart on Fire: A Novena for Loki
- September 10: Numinous Places
Which ones have you read? What was your favorite part?
“In Praise of Hermes” is a novena booklet to the Greek God Hermes. It provides an introduction about this God and nine days of prayers in His honor.
Available on Amazon.
“By Scalpel and Herb, Blood and Healing Hands” is a novena booklet to Eir, a Norse Goddess of Healing. It provides an introduction about this Goddess and nine days of prayers in Her honor.
Available on Amazon.
The God of fire, water, and everything in between. The God Who refuses to stay silent. The Trickster without Whom the lore would be far more boring. The Power Who challenges everyone, even the other Gods Themselves. Nine days of special devotion for Loki, including ritual suggestions, original prayers, a list of His sacred names, dedicated divination systems, and more.
Available on Amazon.
Numinous Places is a visual record of those places in which, over the past few years, my heart has unfolded. It’s a journey of how I learned to root myself and find joy in the world. It’s how I fell in love with places and their stories and learned to accept the spiritual nourishment such stories bring. It’s how I learned to reverence the spirits of places, animist that I am, and how I came to recognize their sustaining power.
Available on Amazon
Hermes with Infant Bacchus
I saw this on twitter (courtesy of Astro Museum). It’s a medallion with Hermes (Mercury) holding the infant Bacchus. It’s electrotype by E. Hannaux, French. c. 1895-1905. I just love this image so much, the strength and tenderness in Hermes comes through so palpably.
Our Gods Are So Good To Us
They are so incredibly good to us in ways large and small! Sometimes it really does take my breath away, and it is so incredibly humbling to know how keenly we are held in Their sight. This was really driven home to me yesterday in the most prosaic of ways. Let me set the stage for my tale.
My husband injured his back not too long ago and I’m disabled (in part due to spinal damage accrued when I was dancing professionally. Ballet is brutal). Our housemate recently tore her rotator cuff gardening. (Nature is brutal too). We had close to eighteen inches of snow dumped on us very late Wednesday night, so when I woke on Thursday, there was a beautiful, glittering blanket of white all across our yard. Usually Sannion would shovel, but while he heals up, that’s not possible (not without the risk of reinjury). I’m not supposed to shovel (doctor’s orders, due to my own back issues) but I figured, well, someone has to do it, and I’m a tough bitch, so I thought I’d give it a shot. That was quickly a no go as I realized if I continued, I was going to seriously hurt myself. I know my body and I know when it’s sensible to push ahead and when I need to back the fuck off and sit down and at my age, I’m smart enough to listen.
So, I spent about an hour calling around town and posting on local groups to find someone who could shovel our drive, but that was a completely fruitless endeavor. In the meantime, we’d had groceries delivered quite early, or at least we were supposed to have had them delivered. The delivery woman hadn’t bothered to let us know she was at our door, though I provided my number, and rather than wear boots like a sensible person and bring the groceries to our door as we’d paid her to do, she shoved them under my car. Yes, you read that correctly. She put three bags of groceries in the snow *under* my car and left. (She told her supervisor that she put them on top of my white van. Mind you, I don’t have a white van). We thought that they’d not been delivered (even going out and looking around, we weren’t able to see them – she put them under the car on the street side of the car) so the part of my morning that wasn’t spent trying to find someone to shovel was spent on the computer with the delivery company getting a refund and filing a complaint about the delivery person. (If you take a delivery job the day after a blizzard and don’t have the sense to wear boots, I have zero sympathy for you). They were good about making restitution – more on that in a bit.
I had awakened in a good deal of pain (I’d pulled a muscle badly the day before) and none of this helped. It was shaping up to be a really awful day. We gave up, did a few informal prayers (I have started doing a brief morning ritual, but that didn’t happen yesterday), ending with an unspecified plea for help. Things immediately turned around. It was really kind of stunning.
Our lovely mailman, who is just an angel, came two hours earlier than usual, found the groceries and carried them up to the house for us. He didn’t have to do that, and the kindness almost made me cry. (I contacted the delivery service to cancel my refund since I had my groceries). We had pretty much given up getting our drive shoveled (and ok, it’s not like we are going anywhere, but I’d still like to be able to take my garbage down to the street and get to my mailbox, plus, if there’s any type of emergency, we need that mobility) when the doorbell rang. It was a young man whom I’d never seen before. He told us, a little dazedly, and he repeated this several times, that a voice told him to come to our house, and he asked if we’d like him to shovel. He did a marvelous job and we told him quite frankly that he was literally the answer to our prayers.
The rest of the day was quiet and uneventful. The bad energy and unpleasantness of the morning was completely gone.
All of this reminds me of something that happened to me seven or eight years ago. I had promised to make steak and offer to it Hermes. The day I owed the meal, we had another blizzard. I’m an uncertain driver in such weather (it was really bad), so I went to Hermes’ shrine and prayed and told him, “I’m sorry but I don’t think I can safely drive to get your steak.” (There were no grocery delivery services in our area then). “I’ll go out as soon as the weather clears up.” I made a liquid offering and went about my business and less than ten minutes later – no joke—a dude rings my bell. He’s a traveling salesman selling…steak. I’d never seen him before and haven’t seen him since. He wanted to get one more sale before calling it a day and heading home before the weather got worse. I bought a ton of steak and Hermes had His offering.
The moral of this story, my friends, is that the Gods do listen to our prayers, large and small, and sometimes the answer is no, but sometimes it’s a yes so loud and unsubtle that we can’t help but be knocked on our butts. Hail to Them all.
Yuletide Shopping Guide – Greco-Roman Products
I created the Yuletide Shopping Guide in part because Yule is one of my favorite times of year. The guide features items polytheists would enjoy seeing in their homes or under their tree this yuletide. All with the hope of spreading some holiday cheer in a difficult year by finding items that can help feed our devotions within our polytheistic traditions, but also to hopefully along the way lift up some of the artisans in our midst too. So far I’ve included resources for crafters, makers, and DIYers: cookie cutters, crafting molds, fabric (Mesoamerican, Egyptian, Greek, Northern Europe), machine embroidery designs, cross-stitch and embroidery patterns, as well as knitting and crochet patterns. I’ve also highlighted some items on a Krampus theme. I’ve spotlighted items you can use to deck the halls and trim the tree.
There were some artists and artisans who offered a range of product across pantheons, or whose work focuses on a tradition that I didn’t have enough items to spotlight on it’s own. So I highly recommend that you carefully peruse the spotlighted artists and artisans in my miscellaneous Part 1, & Part 2. You will find offerings encompassing a vast array of traditions: Norse, Slavic, Celtic, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Hindu, Polynesian, Mesoamerican, Minoan, Assyrian, Sumerian, Welsh, Asian, Native American/Inuit, and more!
Today I’ll be featuring items of interest for polytheists within Cultus Deorum (Roman Polytheism) and Hellenismos (Greek Polytheism).
ArxMercatura
ArxMercatura based in the Ukraine offers items for modern practitioners of Cultus Deorum with religious statues, libation bowls, shrines, Lares, clothes and more.
GoldenGlitterArt
GoldenGlitterArt offers a wide range of blinged out foil art prints, you’ll have to dig among all the offerings but there’s several Greek Gods and Goddesses offered (Hades, Poseidon, Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hera, Hephaestus, and Demeter).
Greekies
SummitCollection offers Greekies, which are hand painted cold cast resin figures of Greek Gods and Goddesses. Artistically, these might be cute statues for a children’s altar.
Miscellaneous
- TheRavensMyre Hermes offering plate
- Philip Crow’s Hermes linocut print
- ArcanicaArt has wooden statues of Pan and Eros
- Cronus felt doll
- Craftspring has felt versions of Zeus, Hermes, and Neptune
- For the kids, Greek Mythology building blocks (Affiliate Disclosure)
Additional resources: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a mini replica of the Three Graces Statue and a bust of Thalia. The British Museum has a range of Greek and Roman merchandise too. Be sure to peruse the previous entries in the Yuletide Shopping Guide as there is a range of items relevant to devotees worshipping under the Greco-Roman umbrella.
Yuletide Shopping Guide – Knitting & Crochet Patterns
Makers, crafters and DIYers I have been spotlighting in my Yuletide Shopping Guide resources to help you create items related to polytheistic religious traditions. So far that has included cookie cutters, craft molds, and fabric related to Mesoamerica, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Ancient Northern Europe. I’m shared machine embroidery design files, cross-stitch and embroidery patterns, and today I have knitting and crochet patterns (including amigurumi) to share.
- Anubis, Bastet, Sekhmet, Set (Egyptian)
- Bastet (Egyptian)
- Helios (Greek)
- Hermes (Greek)
- Ares (Greek)
- Aphrodite (Greek)
- Pan (Greek)
- Ouranos (Greek)
- Kronos (Greek)
- Poseidon, Hades, Zeus (Greek)
- Gaia (Greek)
- Ganesha (Hindu)
- Ganesha (Hindu, this is a different pattern)
- Kali (Hindu)
- Celtic Knot Pillow
- Elder Futhark Blanket
Please let me know if there are any errors, with all the copy/pasting it is easy to make a mistake. If there’s something you think I should spotlight in the yuletide shopping guide, please contact me and let me know. So concludes our fabric resources, but there will be more resources to come! Stay tuned.
Gangleri's Grove 