Queen Of Pagans

You give the rest of us a bad name and you aren't a better person for hating people of a different faith than you. You're a bigot. Knock it off

Happy Imbolc everyone!

Tyr is best known from the story about the Fenrir wolf. Just to refreshen everybody’s memory, Fenrir was one of Loki’s many bizarre children. He started out as a cute pup but as he grew bigger the gods started fearing him. Not even Loki dared go near his own child. Only Tyr was brave enough/loved Fenrir enough to keep playing with him.

Eventually the gods decided that it would be safest to tie Fenrir up but no chains could hold him so they got a magic rope that was impossible to beak. Fenrir suspected trickery was afoot and said he’d only put it on if someone put their hand in his mouth. If he couldn’t break the rope he’d bite the person’s hand off. Again only Tyr stepped forward, put his hand willingly in the wolf’s mouth and lost it as a consequence.

Tyr appears again in Lokasenna where he defends the god of peace, Frey, from Loki’s insults.

Tyr is one of my favorite Norse gods. As a child I had a very surface level view of the Fenrir story. I thought Fenrir was stupid because he knew the gods were tricking him but let them put the rope on him anyway, but I also thought Tyr was mean for being part of it.

It does explain Tyr’s role through. He’s a god of war, but also law and fairness. When he put his hand in Fenrir’s mouth he knew he was going to lose it. He accepted that he would have to make that huge sacrifice for tricking his friend. Losing his hand was fair. He knew he deserved it.

And as a god of war I think it’s endlessly interesting that he’s the person who defends Frey, god of peace, defender of women and freer of the imprisoned. Thor is god of mindless war, Odin is god of smart warfare, but Tyr is god of fair, righteous battle. He doesn’t want war for war’s sake, he only wants war to right wrongs. He’s the god who’s on the side of the downtrodden and abused. Basically, even though he’s a god of law, if the police isn’t fair he’d be one of the people on the ground throwing shit at the police.

He’s the god you pray to if you want things to be fair, but there’s a risk you might not be the wronged part even if you see it that way. Tyr was willing to lose his own hand in the name of fairness so if your prayers to him backfire on you you’ll know you were the real asshole in that situation.

tend to your garden, be it indoors our out; plant bulbs and clear away old, dead things to make space for the plentiful new growth to come

enjoy the muted colours of the day, only lighting candles once the faint cold blue of the evening is falling like a dusky curtain over your room

light mismatched candles in a metal tray on your coffee table and let the glow throb peacefully as you move around the house, making things comfortable for the night

cook a stew, one pot meal or oven-roasted vegetables with plenty rosemary and bay and sea salt and let it simmer, bake or roast while you create a nest for the evening

in your cocoon of blankets, you can finally enjoy the slow-cooked meal that you’ve been looking forward to all day

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE!!! ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

(Saturday, December 21, 2019 ~ 11:19pm Eastern time)

“Winter Solstice has been celebrated in cultures the world over for thousands of years. This start of the solar year is a celebration of Light and the rebirth of the Sun. In old Europe, it was known as Yule, from the Norse, Jul, meaning wheel.Today, many people in Western-based cultures refer to this holiday as ‘Christmas.’ Yet a look into the origins of Christmas reveals its Pagan roots. Emperor Aurelian established December 25 as the birthday of the ‘Invincible Sun’ in the third century as part of the Roman Winter Solstice celebrations. Shortly thereafter, in 273, the Christian church selected this day to represent the birthday of Jesus, and by 336, this Roman solar feast day was Christianized.”

~Selena Fox~

“Winter-solstice celebrations could well be the world’s oldest holidays. There are more known rituals associated with this solstice than for any other time of the year. Prior to the Christian era, Romans called this day Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. Earlier in Rome it was the time of Saturnalia, a notoriously wild holiday. In 46 BC the winter solstice fell around December 25th. Despite calendar reforms, these celebrations — and the observance of Christmas by early Christians — remained locked to the 25th.”

Art by Louis Moe

These douchebags right here. It looks like a weird runic letter ‘d’ doesn’t it? EXCEPT IT’S NOT. It’s ‘eth,’ which does not use the ‘d’ sound. They use a ‘th’ sound.

“Okay, Jurakan, why is that an issue?”

Because twatwaffles it means I’ve been saying everything wrong.

There’s a lot of Norse mythological names like:

-Idunn -Vidarr -Hodr -Hermod -Skadi

and everyone says them

-E-dun -vih-DAR -HO-dur -HER-mod -SKA-di

and that’s not how they’re supposed to be said at all. Because the letter ‘d’ in their name? Isn’t a the letter ‘d’, it’s ‘ð’. Meaning those names/pronunciations should be:

-Iðunn (E-thun) -Viðarr (vih-THAHR) -Hoðr (HO-thur) -Hermoð (HER-moth) -Skaði (SKA-thee)

We mythology nuts have been saying these things wrong for so long? And basically because the runic letter looks kind of like a ‘d’ we decided it was even though it has a completely different sound???

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS MY LIFE IS A LIE

Þú verðr alltaf at leitask við at hafa opinn huga.

Scandinavian Folklore – Varulv/ The Werewolf

Like many other cultures, Scandinavia has its very own version of the werewolf myth. They tell tales of men cursed with running through the land in the shape of a wolf, who mindlessly attacked men and animal alike.  

There was plenty of evidence that werewolves existed, you see. Sometimes a hunter would kill a wolf and find a knife, or even a few shiny buttons, inside the skin. This was a sure sign that this was no regular animal, but a werewolf. On the continent werewolves would transform on the full moon, but that was not the case in Scandinavia. Instead, the unfortunate souls would transform in wolves in Thursdays, as Thursdays have always been associated with magic and the supernatural.

A person could become a werewolf in several different ways. When Christianity started making ways, people thought that women who used painkillers when giving birth would curse their child with the curse of the wolf. The Bible said that woman was burdened with giving birth in pain, and anyone who tried to escape that pain would bring misfortune on their offspring.

Pissing of a witch, or wizard, was also a sure way to get the werewolf curse. Normal people with a grudge might also pay someone well-versed in the dark arts to turn their rival into an animal.

Northerners, however, didn’t consider the werewolf to be the result of a terrible curse, quite the contrary.  But then, the Northern parts of Scandinavia have always been a little wilder, a little more savage, stubbornly holding on to the old ways. In the North, men would turn themselves into werewolves in order to gain the wolf’s savage strength. The wolf could chase and hunt in a way that humans can’t, and in the North’s harsh climate that was a blessing.  The first documented mention is in the Völsunga Saga written in the 13th century.  In the Völsunga Saga, the hero Sigimund and his son, transform into werewolves by dressing in magic wolf skins.