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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.
This weekend is rich and full
Sunwait begins tomorrow (our household celebrates on Fridays) and I’ll post more about that after our ritual, and of course, Saturday is Remembrance/Armistice/Veteran’s Day. I’ll be attending my local ceremony (I’d go to all of them in the surrounding towns, but they’re all held at 11am, because the Armistice was signed at 11/11 at 11am.
This is a weekend to remember our WWI dead, and to thank our living Veterans for what they have endured, for all that they do, and for their sacrifices. I often donate to military charities this month and I will be doing so again. I recommend Paralyzed Veterans of America, Fisher House, the American Legion, and the British Royal Legion.
Many of us wear red poppies to symbolize our respect for and remembrance of the dead. This symbolizes the blood our soldiers shed in battle. It became such a potent symbol following the publication of a poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae, a Canadian doctor who served and died in WWI.
How will you keep this day?
In Flanders Fields
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.
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.
Veterans Day 2020
I’m writing this with a very bad headache, so I will probably be keeping it shorter than usual. I just want to bring two ritual days to people’s attention in case some of you, my readers, may want to celebrate too.
Tomorrow, my household observes Veterans’ Day. Originally, this was called Armistice Day and commemorated the end of WWI, the armistice of which was declared November 11, 11am (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month). It’s still called Armistice Day or Remembrance Day in some places. We have just passed the one hundredth anniversary of WWI and when I honor the military dead, it’s the dead of this war specifically that come forward more than any others. I don’t know why, perhaps because I lost relatives in this war (my cousin Wesley Heffner went over with Pershing’s forces and died on a field in France).
Anyway, we’ll be doing a rite to honor the military dead tomorrow evening, and this will also involve extensive libations for Odin, since in my household, tomorrow is His feastday as Herjafodr (Father of Hosts), Herteit (Glad of War), Valfoðr (Father of the Slain), and Valkjosandi (Chooser of the Slain).
I’ve written about WWI and my observance of Veterans’ Day before. You can read a couple of articles here and here , here and here and here.
For the Fallen
by R.L. Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
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.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.I’ve written on my other blog about my cousin Wesley Heffner. That piece, part of a larger section on an ancestral pilgrimage I did, may be found here.
Sunwait, a celebration of the six weeks before Yule which is held by some Heathens today begins this week. This will be my household’s first year celebrating this and we plan to keep it on Fridays. I’ll write more about that after Veteran’s day. Be well, all my readers. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Remember your dead.
They Deserve More Than A Day
November is a very special month for me. It’s a time where Odin looms particularly large in my world and I start a ritual process that culminates in an intensive series of Yule rituals wherein Odin is the focus. It’s not that He’s absent at other times of the year — He in no way is – but November is special. A large part of the reason for this isn’t just the seasonal shift, something to which I’m particularly sensitive in general (probably thanks to my old and achy bones!), but also that Veteran’s Day /Remembrance Day is in November. As someone who has an extensive practice in honoring the military dead, this is a powerful time.
That may be what is so unique for me at this time with Odin: He doesn’t usually come to me in my devotions primarily as Lord of Hosts. I know He is a battle God. I resonate very strongly with that, but it’s not how He usually chooses to engage. As November rolls around, that changes and suddenly when I reach out to Odin, it’s as the Battle God, wise in weapons, Lord of the Einherjar, Sigtyr, the Victory God that He comes. The charge of that presence really calls me to step up my honoring of the military dead at this time.
This year as always, a significant part of my focus vis-à-vis the military dead is WWI dead. Partly that’s because I have a cousin [Wesley Heffner] who went over with Pershing’s Forces and never returned. He died on a field in France. He is in my thoughts a lot at this time of year. Then, moving away from WWI, my father’s birthday was November 1 and he was a veteran of WWII and Korea, so that also colors my practice. I feel sometimes like they take my hands and lead me into deeper understanding of what this practice of veneration entails. Usually I post something honoring the military dead every day in November. I’m not doing that this year, but I am going to be donating all November proceeds from my etsy store to Paralyzed Veterans of America. I think they do good work. (There are a couple of other organizations that I tend to gravitate to as well, including the British Royal Legion — I like that they provide retraining programs for vets. I’d welcome suggestions of other charities too from my readers).
Some years the military dead are more present than others and this year they seem particularly present. I wish we could learn from them, to cherish that which we are given, to value their lives, our lives, and the lives of our children, to understand that the consequences of any war, no matter how large or small it may be, reach far, far beyond the generation involved. They have powerful lessons to teach and I’m grateful to Odin for pointing me on the path of veneration.
During WWI, poet Wilfred Owen, quoting a line from Horace, wrote a poem called Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria Mori. The title translates as “sweet and proper it is to die for one’s country” and it was published in 1920 after his death – Owen died in the trenches and is generally considered to be the greatest of the WWI poets. Whereas the original Horatian Ode may be read as a rather sweetly sentimental exhortation to the valor so essential to proper Romanitas, Owen flips the equation on its head, summoning the brutal bleakness of the trenches, the stench and horror of war, and with bitter hollowness damning that sentiment as an ‘old lie.’ I think both are correct. Civilization is built on the backs of its warriors, on the viscera of those willing to lay down their lives in its defense and we are defined by those sacrifices. Yet, we waste lives so blithely, often so pointlessly for leaders’ egos and greed. It is a corruption with a terrible cost. We owe those who fought and most of all we owe them the gift of learning from their mistakes.
As November begins, moving me inexorably into the deepest, most intense time of year for my practice, may I remember them well.
Veteran’s Day/Remembrance Day 2017
Called Remembrance Day in the UK and Veterans Day here, today is a day to honor those who died in WWI and, in the US, all those who served (within the US, it has become a day to honor veterans of all our wars). Generations of men and women were lost. Even more came home destroyed. WWI utterly transformed our world and we are the children of that devastation.
There are no veterans alive anymore from WWI (or very, very, very few). Each year there are fewer and fewer veterans of WWII alive. We’ve never paid heed to our veterans from Vietnam, and Korea is all but forgotten. Then there are our more recent wars. It is our duty and obligation to speak for our dead, our honor and privilege to listen to our living. We can, at the very least, give them one day, if nothing else.
Today, I remember particularly my cousin Wesley Heffner. He was part of Pershing’s Expeditionary Force, part of the first American forces to go to Europe in WWI. He was eighteen when he enlisted and never returned home. He died from wounds taken on a bloody field in France. He never made it to twenty. He enlisted out of a deep sense of patriotism and desire to do good in the world.
This is perhaps the only extant photo of Wesley. I’ve visited his grave, in a cemetery where I”m related to at least 98% of the dead lying there, and I’ve left offerings. I wonder what the world of our family would have been like had he returned, had he lived. With each person dead, a whole universe was obliterated, and the generations they would have touched. The least we can do is to remember them.
Today is also the birthday of my favorite WWII general, George S. Patton. He fought in WWI. He designed a sword, nearly medaled in the Olympics (and would have by modern scoring rubrics), was a brilliant tank tactician, and he saved the world. He was largely responsible for Allied Victory during the Battle of the Bulge (Patton and this Third Army).
So hail them. Pour out offerings. Visit their graves. Take your living veterans out to lunch. Remember them and their sacrifices throughout the year. Look for opportunities to honor them. We have built our world on their blood, bone, and suffering.
One of my favorite WWI poems
DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)
Wilfred Owen
Thought to have been written between 8 October 1917 and March, 1918
Notes on Dulce et Decorum Est
1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST – the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean “It is sweet and right.” The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country.
2. Flares – rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the Dark.)
3. Distant rest – a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer
4. Hoots – the noise made by the shells rushing through the air
5. Outstripped – outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle
6. Five-Nines – 5.9 calibre explosive shells
7. Gas! – poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned
8. Helmets – the early name for gas masks
9. Lime – a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue
10. Panes – the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks
11. Guttering – Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling
12. Cud – normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier’s mouth
13. High zest – idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea
14. ardent – keen
15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – see note 1 above.
These notes are taken from the book, Out in the Dark, Poetry of the First World War, where other war poems that need special explanations are similarly annotated. The ideal book for students getting to grips with the poetry of the First World War.
Taken from this site.
In Flanders Fields
by Major John McCrae, MD
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.
Gangleri's Grove 