Post-Ritual note

So, I did end up praying extemporaneously so I don’t have a pre-written prayer to share. I will say that I was struck while invoking Sunna tonight that one of Her greatest gifts to us is courage. She gives us courage of heart that we can draw upon to do what is right when the need comes. I love that and each Sunwait, I find myself just so grateful that I live in a time when I can love and honor the Gods as openly as I do and each Sunwait, I love Sunna even more.

Here is a picture of our shrine, a close up tonight. I put a number of things on the shrine and asked Her blessing on them. One of them was the prayer card you see right in front.

If anyone would like this ^ blessed card (for free), please contact me via email krasskova at gmail.com. I will give it to the first person who emails me. Everyone else can have a Sunna card, but it will not have been blessed in ritual — OR you may request a blessed one and we can put it on the shrine table for next week and send it out after next week’s sunwait. Just ask. So, if you’re interested, go ahead and email me and I’ll get that out. Include a mailing address.

I pray that all of you who are celebrating Sunwait have a lovely and blessed week.

EDIT : The card has been claimed. 🙂

Sunwait week 5: Sunna in Raido

I didn’t post a prayer last week because I didn’t write it beforehand; rather, I just spoke extempore during the ritual with Sunna in Ansuz. I’m probably going to do the same tonight — we start our ritual in about an hour. I wanted to wish everyone a very blessed Sunwait.

This is such a lovely way to prepare for Yule. Each week, Sunna carries us a little bit deeper into the nourishing darkness of Yule, of Odin’s time, of the intercalendary time of sacrifice and renewal. The more we celebrate this series of rituals, the more it becomes possible to sense the subtle shift from week to week, rune to rune. Tonight we move into Raido and that is such tremendous momentum. Ansuz cleared the way, created ordered space and now, this week, Sunna takes up Raido and we began the joyous rush into Yule proper. There’s such momentum, such power to raido. I was thinking about it today and the funniest image came to me: a giant waterslide and raido is like being pushed unexpectedly down the slide and you can’t stop, but you don’t really want to as you go rushing by. The cycle turns and Sunna rejoices.

I wish you all blessings on this night … one more week of Sunwait, folks, one more week.

Sunwait Week 3: Sunna in Thurisaz

Prayer to Sunna in Thurisaz

 

I hail You Mighty Warrior,
Who comes with shining brightness
Wielding a fiery rune.
You conquer evil.
You drive out pollution.
You bring wholeness and healing,
And raise us up in the sight of our Gods.
None may stop You as You storm across the skies.

You come, oh Sunna, with thurisaz,
The thorn of power, scalpel sharp.
You wield it with precision
And it dances in Your hand.
It drives back the unmaker.
It drives back wickedness.
It opens space for the Holy Ones.
It protects us from harm.

You, Oh Goddess, are deepest Compassion.
You are radiant glory, and Your light
fills us with truth and righteous anger;
it fills us with delight and joy;
it fills us with insight and ecstatic inspiration.
Thurisaz is the blade with which You open the way,
freeing us of the bonds which hold us back,
freeing us of the chains of our own impiety,
our own impatience, our own lack of reverence
and all the things that come to cloud our understanding,
all the things themselves born out of inexperience or fear.

May we be brave in our devotion to You, oh Sunna,
And bold in our devotion to the Holy Ones.
Hail to You, oh Goddess of the sun,
On this, the third week of Sunwait.

(by G. Krasskova)

Sunwait 2023 Week 2: Sunna in Uruz

To honor Sunna, if anyone would like a [free] prayer card of Her, please contact me privately with your mailing address. I will send one card per person until 9pm this Sunday EST. I have other cards available at my etsy shop, but this is a special offer here only, so email me at Krasskova at gmail.com if you want one. 

Uruz came with a power that demanded movement, speaking of initiation and mystery and the weaving of wyrd. I have no words to express that which it gave. Sunna’s presence was one of delighted laughter and a holy momentum that likewise demanded that we drum and dance. I was in tremendous physical pain prior to the rite – if hips, legs, and feet could have a migraine then that was how I felt. I could barely shuffle but when the Goddess with this rune came, I danced. 

Prayer to Sunna in Uruz

Healing, vitality, resilience –
these things lie condensed in the power of this rune.
We need these things in our world today.
The dead need them.
The land needs them.
We need them, in every heart and spirit.
May uruz flourish, granted by Your gracious hand,
in every one of us, oh Sunna.

Restore us, oh Goddess.
Restore us and fill our hearts with Your warmth and light.
This is my prayer today.
Let this Sunwait be a time of healing and restoration
for us and for our world.

Hail to You, Sunna, Sol, Alfröðull, Glory of heaven!
Hail to You, Oh, Daughter of Mundilfari,
Sister of Mani, Sister of Sinthgunt.
Hail to You, Shining Wife of Glenr,
Friend of Dagr, Friend of Lussi,
and skilled Mistress of two swift steeds:
Árvakr and Alsviðr.
Hail to You, All-Glowing, Ever-Bright,
Fair-Wheel, Shining Bride of Heaven.
Oh, Bright Goddess, Shine Your light upon us
and grant us healing of body, soul, and heart.
Hail to You, oh Sunna, hail Most Gracious One,
on this, the second week of Sunwait.

 

(by G. Krasskova)

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.

Bookversary! Day Star and Whirling Wheel: Honoring the Sun and Moon in the Northern Tradition

Affiliate Advertising Disclosure

Originally published November 4, 2009.

In the Northern Tradition, the Sun is represented by the Goddess Sunna, and the Moon by her divine brother Mani. They give their names to two of the days of the week, and their rays shine down upon us, giving life and inspiration. This devotional is dedicated to them, and to their family. They are more than mere personifications; they bring joy and peace to every day of our lives. We saw them first in the sky as children, and now we can understand and reverence them even more fully with the help of this book.

While this book is out of print, all content is still under copyright protection. You can find copies in the resale marketplace, including through third party sellers at amazon, and elsewhere.

A Very Belated Thought for Sunna’s Day

Sunday belongs to the Goddess of the Sun: Sol or Sunna (both names occur in our lore). She is a force, a Power and on a very frenetic and frustrating day, it occurs to me that one of Her lessons, one of Her gifts is that no matter how bad a day may be, the sun will alway rise again thereby giving us the chance to regroup, reconsider, re-prioritize, and begin again anew. No day, however poorly it has gone needs to be the determiner of all to follow unless we allow it to be so. That is a powerful lesson, one of resilience, perseverance, personal responsibility, and the cultivation of power.

Hail Sunna in Her glory. Hail Her in Her power. Most of all, hail Her in Her kindness and benevolence.

It is a privilege to praise Her.

The Third Week of SunWait – Sunna in Thurisaz

Sunwait came hard this week. We’ve been shuttling between home, work, and physical therapy rehabilitation center where my husband is recovering from surgery (a place only a little less polluted spiritually than the hospital itself, and in some cases worse) and it’s a difficult thing to go daily into such a polluted place and then to return home without bringing pollution or worse along for the ride. Every time I leave, I hate leaving my husband in such a place, though he is strong and more than capable of handling the situations that arise – malignant bottom feeding spirits feed on pain ,confusion, and loss and they abound in this hellscape. I’m convinced that there are at least two demoniacs on the floor (got cornered by one of them the other day—I was rushing and not properly centered in my Gods and Their power. When I walk with the latter, such foulness cannot come near me. A blessing sufficed to drive it back but what must that be like for the poor soul at their mercy? I pray constantly as I walk through the ward, not for myself but for those who must live there, for those vulnerable to spiritual infestation and harm. I actually don’t know why there aren’t chaplains visiting frequently – It would help). 

The upshot of this is that we’ve all been doing many more spiritual cleansings. I usually cleanse myself daily in some way, both with prayer and meditation, but also perhaps with sacred smoke, or khernips, a cleansing bath, etc. We’ve tripled that. One of the things that I have found particularly helpful, that leaves me feeling absolutely spiritually clean and refreshed, is a salt scrub. Now, the one that I do is specifically dedicated to Odin but I’ll give a generic here that y’all can adapt. 

Nightly, I fill a tub of bathwater (and put Epsom salts, vinegar, sometimes Kolonia 1800, Florida water or some other scent used to cleanse people, places, and things; sometimes I make the bath khernips – the whole thing lol. Sometimes I add beer and/or milk. I pray to various Gods to bless it. Salt for instance, is sacred to the Roman Goddess Salis, Whose name means salt and who was honored along with Hygeia and Asklepius as a major healing Deity. I ask Freyr to bless the beer. I may ask Idunna to bless the whole thing. It varies based on my mood of the day). As the bath fills, I pray to Odin and read a set prayer to Him and usually make an offering. Once the bath fills, I stand in it and rub the salt all over, including top of my head (crown chakra) and all the way down. Then I sink into the bath and wash it off and get on with having a nice, relaxing bath as per the norm. 

I will share my basic Odin – oriented recipe below. Feel free to use different oils. If there are specific scents you associate with your main Deity, go ahead and substitute those oils and focus it on that Deity. Use this as a guide and just adapt it for your own Gods. I don’t worry about exact drop amounts. I just add and mix until I like the smell. 

Odin Salt Scrub

One pound of sea salt. 

One cup baking soda

¼ cup vanilla powder (found in the baking aisle of your local supermarket)

Liberally sprinkle (at least two tablespoons, more if you want) sweet almond oil and mix it throughout the salt mixture (this helps moisturize the skin because salt, for all its cleansing properties can be very abrasive). 

Ok. That’s your base. 

To that add the following oils (remember, it’s easier to add than to remove. So, start by adding maybe twenty drops and mix. Then check the scent. You can always add more). Use food grade oils. 

Rose otto, galangal, ylang-ylang, violet, anise (go lightly with this one), chamomile (a queen of flowers amongst the nine herbs), and Solomon seal oil (I like to buy it from Luckymojo shop. It’s the best I’ve found). 

After adding each one, mix thoroughly with your hands. When you’ve added them all, adjust for your preference in smell. Put it in a jar and set it on your shrine for a night. Then for nine nights do the salt scrub, bracketing the whole thing with prayer. 

I’ve been doing it every night after coming home from the rehabilitation center and it is one of the most cleansing practices I’ve found.

That is all for today. We are half way through Sunwait which means half way to Yule and that is a lovely thing. 

A Brief SunWait Musing

What does it mean when Sunna comes in/with/through a particular rune? When She comes in fehu, or Uruz, etc. what does that mean about HOW She comes? What does this alliance imply. It’s different every time and contemplation on this has the potential to open up understanding of both the runes in question and this glorious Goddess.

In Honor of Sunna and the First Week of Sunwait