#othinn

I was obsessed with learning the truth, until I learned that Odin lies a lot. The point for me, was that he would teach me about things, show me hidden knowledge. I literally went into subservience to him, and I went down a path that did not stop for five years.

When I talk about my self study I say it was for five years, it was, and during that time, Odin taught me many things. How to perform trance, how to do trance literally anywhere at any given time. How to perform galdr, by singing spells. He also taught me how to heal, how to hex, how to deal with my problems. Even more, he showed me the reality and limitations of things I was pursuing. He showed me that things within heathenry were not as it all seemed. That there wasn't as much information as the people I'd encountered said there were.

In some way, I still serve him now. Once you enter a pact with Odin, you never really get out of it. He loosened my chains into threads, but he still guides me, despite how much he fecking annoys me at times!!! He's the reason I understand how to control my anger and use it for better things. I fell down into the pit of it and came back out.

Day 13: Write a poem for your deity. Use you compiled list of information as inspiration. Give the poem to your deity as an offering.

Grimr. I know You / not. I hear You / not. How many faces, Fjölnir, have You shown me, how many names and how many years? beneath the hood is a mask behind the mask is an Eye: Seer, unseen.

Geirtyr. The first time. I wasn’t allowed to look at You then. The spear, though, chill sharp tracery, throat to groin to throat again. The spear again, later, and again and again in my side or piercing my diaphragm heat (mine) seeping into leaflitter (cold) or pinned against rough bark pain pain breathless pain and spilling-out: ekstasis.

(ecstasy, spearhead, bleeding-out: and none half as sharp as Your eye/s)

Hangatyr. With the spear comes the noose. Gallows-God, Breath-Gifter, Breath-Taker, snatching at the air from my lips, catching me up, dangling, death drawn near, desire also. I breathe in, in-spiration, a gift; I breathe out, expire: another.

Sviðrir. Mind gone taut chest caught rushing panic wild -- hushing me, soothing, stilling the breath, slowing the bloodbeat. O Giver of Gifts, O Generous One, in pain and panic I turn trusting toward You, Calmer, well-acquainted with anxiety.

Þekkr. I feared You that first time, again at the second, squared off that once a catling bristling at a bear in defense of -- well. You remember. A month’s worth of taming of careful hands more careful words all of it so damn careful I wanted to scream. It worked, Old Bastard; You know damn well what You’re about, welcome now, desired now.

Day 16: Create a song list that makes you think about your deity. Give a brief reason for choosing each song, and provide links to youtube videos for other people to enjoy! You can devote the energy you put into this project as an offering for your deity.

Okay, so for this one I am very carefully AVOIDING songs which specifically mention the Old Man. That means no Heilung, no Leslie Fish, no Skald. All of these are wonderful! I highly recommend! But I feel like the point of this prompt is choosing stuff that actually requires explaining (or at least that’s how I’m reading it; ymmv) and those are all kind of just right out there and deliberately on the nose.

Also, there are 18 of these, because it makes me chortle.

1. “The Hymn of Acxiom,” Vienna Teng. “Leave your life open, you don’t have to hide / Someone is gathering every crumb you drop/ these mindless decisions and moments you long forgot.” Creepy-ass choral song for a creepy-ass Watcher, absolutely enchantingly gorgeous as long as you don’t listen too hard to the lyrics and absolutely terrifying once you do. 

2. “Strange Waters,” Bruce Cockburn. “You’ve been leading me/ beside strange waters/ streams of beautiful lights in the night/ but where is my pastureland in these dark valleys?/ if I lose my grip, will I take flight?” Loooooots of seiðr feels, lots of wanderer feels, the sense of endless travel in strange places drawn there by a stranger God.

3. “So Come Back, I Am Waiting,” Okkervil River. I can’t actually pick a piece of this to quote here. All of it is just too damn on the nose. But that satisfaction, that awareness that oh yes, you might be running right now, you might be elsewhere right now, but that’s fine. He’ll be waiting. “There’s plenty of time to make you mine.”

4. “Edge of the Western World,” Bone Poets Orchestra. Okay, this one is maybe a bit on the nose, a raven throwing a party at the edge of the world, but like: “The tasty things a lonely raven mind requires/ spread out beneath your wings on the shore/ Never met a crow who found the end of desire, so quoth the hungry Raven: Always more.” (I get big Two-Man Con vibes from this one, ngl.)

5. “Catapult,” Arctic Monkeys. “Both sides, and softly came the growl from both sides/ and if his whisper splits the mist/ just think of what he’s capable of with his kiss/ Nice try -- you cannot turn away but nice try.” Two for one: sex AND the Old Con’s particular style of captivating bastardry!

6. “Big God,” Florence + The Machine. Do I really need to explain this one? Other, maybe, than mentioning that one time it turned on at a very inopportune moment (with accompanying leering via godphone) that nearly resulted on me choking on air while trying to be a Very Serious Professional?

7. “Boots,” Kesha. “So slide over here, tell me the truth, I know you love me wearing nothing but your boots.” Laughing at both myself and Him for this one: my experience with Him is that He’s worse than all the rest combined when it comes to being very fucking grabby about anything I wear that might possibly be considered a reference back to Him. Corvids.

8. “Death Whispered a Lullaby,” Opeth. Just… the whole thing. I’m not sure it’s meant to be soothing, and yet….

9. “Der letzte Tanz,” Elisabeth, das Musical. Y’all. This entire thing is so much fun, I highly recommend it, it is fantastic. Preening over-the-top incredibly dramatic psychopomp getting huffy at people (and liking them better!) for not just, like, being immediately entranced, it’s great. “Der letze Tanz, der letzte Tanz, gehört allein nur mir -- den letzen Tanz, den letzen Tanz, tanz’ ich allein mit dir!”

10. “The Hunter’s Star,” Shearwater. “As forests bow/ and blacken the air/ as the canopies burn away/ and the arc-light fades/ and no gull remains/ to repeat its call/ only now would you long/ for the ancient boughs….” This has very Ragnarok and/or twilight of the gods feels to me, also very much wanderer who has forgotten where home is, if ever they knew. 

11. “Witch,” The Bird And The Bee. “Yes, I am a carnival/ a house of mirrors/ and I will con you/ and all my tricks/ and all my magic/ will keep you dizzy/ with desire.” Oðin as drag queen, or: what happens on Samsø stays on Samsø. Maybe. Theoretically. (It totally doesn’t.)

12. “Silent Lucidity,” Queensrÿche. “There’s a place I like to hide/ a doorway that I run through in the night./ Relax, child, you were there/ you only didn’t realize and you were scared./ (If you open your mind for me/ you won’t rely on open eyes to see.)” This one is like. I get shivers from listening to it with the Old Man in mind. (@grimnirslee this is why I startled so hard when you asked about Dreamfather)

13. “Somebody To Die For,” Hurts. “I’ve got nothing left to live for/ got no reason yet to die/ But when I’m standing in the gallows/ I’ll be staring at the sky/ Because no matter where they take me/ in death I will survive/ and I will never be forgotten/ with you by my side.” Can we say Havamal callback? All things die but the good name, the memory, and He’s got a long memory; where better to be kept? 

14. “Come Away To The Water,” Maroon 5. Hard for me to pull any one part out; the entire thing feels very viscerally like the Old Wolf laying a path of desire straight to waiting jaws, a ravenous maw. To be devoured, rent, to be eaten by a God (and perhaps from there reconstituted: but first the devouring, divine.)

15. “Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann,” Nena. “Im Sturz durch Zeit und Raum/ erwacht aus einem Traum/ nur ein kurzer Augenblick/ dann kehrt die Nacht zurück.” Interacting with Him feels sometimes like tumbling through the vast chaotic maelstrom of Being, everything revealed suddenly as masks in flux, as dreams constructed and shared to paste a layer of sense and meaning. That fleeting moment, that blink of an eye in which one is awake, and sees -- and then the night comes mercifully down again, protective.

16. “It Will Come Back,” Hozier. This whole damn thing feels like a warning designed to seduce, a flash of fangs behind smiling lips. Oh, sure, He’s saying right out that I know better than to let Him in… but we both know it’s going to happen anyways, don’t we? 

17. “Storyteller,” Alexander James Adams. “Please, Storyteller, pull a tale from your pocket/ Spin me a story from your coattails so bare/ My heart has turned cold, my dreams are too old,/ and I need to know magic’s still there.” This is the one I listen to when I’m world-weary and exhausted and the world is too much and my work is too much and I’m having trouble figuring out how the fuck to keep caring about any of it -- and that grizzled old warrior, the wanderer, the gifter of inspiration, comes through with a story, with enough reenchantment to keep going.

Old Man: (sense of amusement and plotting, what else is new)

I get to the vet’s office. No vet in sight but the second I make it in the door I feel something soft and warm slam into my shins. I look down: grey tabby cat, older male, VERY INSISTENT about wanting attention and affection RIGHT NOW. Awww, is there an office cat now? How sweet.

Person at desk: Quick, shut the door, he likes to go out wandering!

I close the door and straighten up so I can hand the clerk my card, then squat down to keep petting the cat. He is being very very grabby, though good about his claws, and demanding more chin skritches, yes there, more now, and purring up a storm. About this time I notice that this old grey cat who likes to go wandering only has one eye.

Me, internally: Seriously, Old Man? A little on the nose much?

Clerk finishes with the card, I stand up to sign and retrieve the medication and try to shoo the cat away from the door so I can leave. Cat is not on board with this plan. Clerk comes out from behind the desk to retrieve cat.

Clerk: “Odin, you stinker, quit trying to run off with them!”

............

And then I made it out the door and a whole two feet away before shaking my fist and yelling YOU ARE NOT SUBTLE at the sky.

And like.

Day 3: Does your deity have any alternate names or epithets? If they do, what are they, and what do they mean? What does the name you call your deity mean?

I am absolutely not listing all of Odin’s heiti here. Nuh-uh, nope, can’t make me, not gonna do it. I will list some of the ones I call Him by, though. Some -- this is not comprehensive because holy shit do I not feel like inflicting that headache on myself. In no particular order:

Odin (Oðinn): the inrush of breath and intensity associated with rage and madness and poetic inspiration. I… honestly use this less than most of the rest, so when I do use this name it’s typically with at least some reference to that aspect.

Old Man: Pretty self-explanatory. He’s notable for being one of the very few gods described as old, which is rare in warriors and poets and wanderers, and thus worth watching out for.

Old Bastard/Perv/Jackass: He is a queer pervy genderdeviant pain in the ass and He knows it. And unfortunately I love it. 

Old Warrior/Old Wolf: Associated with wolves both in battle and off the field. This epithet usually comes out if He’s showing a more predatory or hunt-driven aspect. Also Hildolfr, Battle-Wolf. Sometimes this is less immediately predatory and more just world-weary, jaded, sense of having seen it all and look what’s coming round again. I sometimes think of Him in that aspect as Brutus from Pixie and Brutus.

Gangleri: Wanderer. I’m moved around and traveled a lot, and identify strongly with this aspect; I kinda just pepper it in there.

Grimnir and Grimr: Hooded One and Masked One. Because He has a bit much fun with that. Usually at my expense. 

Hrafnass/Hrafnatyr: Raven-God. Used whenever He’s being particularly grabby about whatever catches His eye (shiny! mine! worse than flock of jackdaws, I swear.) I use Hrafnass more because then I can also call Him an ass and sometimes I am five. 

Hangatyr: God of the Hanged, also God of Suspension Bondage and Breathplay, and I use it whenever it comes up in any or all of those contexts (they overlap to a surprising terrifying high degree.)

Ygg: Terrible. Sometimes used in frustration, sometimes jokingly, sometimes entirely serious, really heavily depends on context.

Geirtyr: Spear-God. Used when He sees fit to pepper my dreams and/or trancework with images of being speared through; also when He’s dragged up something from my subconscious or traumatic history I need to look at with rather too good an aim, and painfully; also when He’s cracking too damn many terrible puns and I would like Him to FUCK ME ALREADY DAMN YOU.

Sviðrir: Calmer or Soother. I do a lot of work with Him around anxiety, panic, and C-PTSD. He’s absolutely my go-to if I need an anchor to hold onto while ramping up to an attack or at high levels of arousal. 

Healer: Basically a follow-up to the previous two. 

Fimbulthulr and Hroptr: Mighty Counselor and Sage. I also call Him Teacher. This is usually when I am looking for advice or help unpacking my head.

Oski: Granter of Wishes/Wished-For/Desired. I go with the last two connotations for this and generally use it as an endearment. I was absolutely terrified of Him and wanted nothing to do with Him for a while (yay more trauma!) and while I know He gets it, understood it perfectly well and does not bear a grudge for it, I like to emphasize explicitly that that is no longer the case: all my kvetching and grousing aside, I want Him around, I call Him desired and wished-for.

Thekkr: Welcome. Basically the same as above, an explicit statement that He’s welcome in my life and home and arms and bed.

Day 4: What symbols/animals/plants/etc. are associated with your deity? Start out by listing the ones that you know. Then, do a little research to see if you can find more. In a separate list on the same post, list those ones, too. Make note of which ones you think fit and don’t fit your deity.

Stuff I’m pretty familiar with, not at all comprehensive because Fjölnir why.

wolves

ravens

bears

spear/staff

EYES SO MANY EYES

the noose

stags

runes and bindrunes

the valknut

madness

mead

breath though I don’t quite know how that gets symbolized

the motif of the wizard and/or wanderer and/or strange guest

blue and black and grey things

ash trees and oak trees

Yggdrasil 

crossroads

the Wild Hunt

memes and memetic warfare

motif of the storyteller

oath-making and oath-breaking

poetry and galdr

He’s got a lot, is what I’m saying.

An hour of browsing is reminding me of a bunch of things I’d read and had slip my mind, but not finding much new; what’s novel is mostly SPG and UPG of particular crystals (which I don’t generally use) and some scents.

elm

onyx

goldstone 

sandalwood

carnelian