#heldeity

Móðguðr: with each other or with the horrors?

I feel like the catholics are onto something with this so I wanted in on the action. all the prayers are under the cut.

She is Death, in all its forms. Rotten or rotting, long dead bones whispering to the earth, Winter at its coldest. Quiet but comforting, a familiar presence in the void.

She is Necessity. For new beginnings, there must be an end. A necessary darkness as time turns to see the light once more. She is steadfast in Her thoughts and actions, not a single movement wasted.

She is Change, for what bigger change is there than Death? She is the shift from Autumn to Winter, the dying breath of a season. She changes the world around Her with Her mere existence, leaving brand new chapters to be written in Her steps.

She is Healing. She will strip you of your rot, your dead things, your grief. She takes sorrow, pain, misery, and She will bring their Death.

Thank you muchly :)

I don't know any resources, but I have worked with Hel before. She's a death deity and psychopomp, and she's exceptionally helpful with grief-work and grief-processing. She's helped me move past things that were long-gone for me but I still clung to because I missed them. Hel was there patiently waiting for my invitation to step in, so we could begin the process of moving what had passed into her realm.

Death is not seen as a sudden process in Norse worldview. People are constantly growing and dying, very much like Yggdrasil. We need to clear out the dead flowers of ourselves to make room for new growth. It's just the way life is, and Hel is exceptional at facilitating this difficult process.

The lore isn’t really explicit about it either way. Medieval Icelandic literature tends to give very few details about anyone's internal feelings or motives. We could speculate that she might be resentful over being exiled. Gylfaginning does describe her as “downcast and fierce-looking” (Anthony Faulkes translation.) However, we could also speculate that she enjoys ruling. Hel is not the Christian Hell, but a morally neutral underworld where the vast majority of people end up, regardless of how they lived their lives. They throw a feast for Baldr when he ends up there, meaning it’s not all doom and gloom.

But the question might be kind of moot to begin with, as it appears that at least some people might have understood Hel the goddess to be a personification of Hel the place. Helheim is a relatively modern term coined to make the distinction between the goddess and the place. The Old Norse texts just use Hel to refer to both.

Think of it like Aegir...he is a personification of the sea while also being literally the sea, with a name that just means "sea." It's not a matter of wanting to be there so much as, well, literally being there.

And as with all of Norse religion, there’s a very good chance that beliefs varied regionally and over time. There may not be one single “correct” answer.

While it's kind of old at this point and may not be 100% up to date in terms of recent scholarship. The Road to Hel by Hilda Rodereick Elilis (later Davidson) is a very accessible read that might be of interest to you.

I wanted to make a post about what my devotional days are like. For those new to this blog I worship Hel, the Norse Goddess of the dead. I’ve been honoring her over a year; and this last October I devoted myself to her completely. That being said; Saturdays are the days where almost every part of my day is spent as a devotional to her. I start with my outfit choice of the day; I wear all black, or black-and-white. I veil my hair in addition to my outfit; the veil I wear is also black(though on rare occasion I will wear a blue one). From there I head over to the altar space I have for Hel; I light her candle and do an offering of rose incense and a libation-- today’s libation was coffee. I recite my prayers to her and spend time meditating before her altar which is then followed by divination. The cards I draw are to be my focus for the week to come. Afterwards I devote my yoga practice to her and do so before her altar space, allowing my mind and body to find a grounding and balancing energy. The rest of the day is spent reading books(or the occasional video) and focusing on death specifically and how I’m learning to accept death energy in to my life. I take some time to journal in my home-made Memento Mori journal. (I’ve only just started the journal, but I hope to share ideas pertaining to it soon.)

At the end of the day I once more mediate in front of her altar. This one being much more focused than the morning meditation.