#thor devotional

I don’t really know how to start, so I think I’ll start from the beginning. 

In December 2016 my spouse and I had a beautiful conversation about faith, practices, and religion prompted by a personal topic. Over the course of our conversation we spoke about Judaism, about Animism, and about Pagan practices. 

It was so enlightening, enthralling! For years I had felt so despondent and lacking, and I had been so nervous to bring up an interest in Paganism to my spouse. Yet here we were, and it was going beautifully!

My immediate family were and are (to my knowledge) perfectly happy with atheist beliefs, which is fine by me. It helps them. It doesn’t help me. Comically, once I mentioned a belief in ghosts and my father responded so earnestly and shocked, stating “You can’t believe in ghosts, you’re an atheist!” ...But that’s a topic for a later journal. (Journal? What am I going to call these.)

For a time, I tried accompanying my grandmother to church. One part of this is because my best friend at the time was a staunchly Christian young lady, and I wanted badly to believe as she did. She seemed so at peace. I was not.

As my faith in the Christian G-d waned, I became more and more upset. I remember standing atop a hill in a wooded area and screaming to G-d, and feeling so empty and still after. I remember weeping and crumpling at the thought that nothing was there. It didn’t feel right.

And so for years I shifted between calling myself an atheist and agnostic and being absolutely insufferable when people talked about religion. (Also insufferable in general.)

But now let’s go back to 2016, when my spouse and I came alive as we spoke. 

The concept of witchcraft as a practice came up, and we both found ourselves looking at the world in a new, beautiful light. The practice was and is beautiful to us , and while I could acknowledge at the time that I didn’t need a religious practice to accompany witchcraft... I still felt lacking. So I started pouring over gods and pantheons. I started reading about the cultures that my families came from, although no one I’m immediately related to still holds close ties to these cultures.

I tried (by oak and ash and thorn I tried) to connect to my Celtic ancestry. In ways I did connect to it, but the gods of my Irish, Scottish, and English ancestors didn’t call to me. And then... I started reading about Thor.

I’ll be the first to say my sources weren’t fantastic. They ranged from select snippets of the Eda, to people I wasn’t aware were holding him up as a white supremacist’s dream. (BIG NOTE: fuck Nazi Heathens. Fuck Odinists.) I looked at sources that weren’t great... but it still sparked something that wouldn’t leave me be. 

One of the sources I found had said that Thor’s feast day was the first full moon of January. It was a little misinformed, but it sparked an idea. I would try to commune with Thor. This was in 2017, now.

I set up the spare room in our tiny apartment. Warm blankets, some fresh bread, milk, maybe even wine. I don’t really remember what all I put in there, except for the candle. I was very active on Tumblr at the time, and I had seen people using candles/flames as a form of Divination so I thought I would give it a try. I blew on the flame from different angles, got close, took a step back, tried to find the least drafty place to put it... and I spoke to it.

I spent a good couple of hours in that room, naked and staring at a candle. I spoke to it about why I wanted to commune, about my fears, about my hopes, and about... anything.

And then it started to rain. Not a hard rain, but a rain accompanied by the deep, low rumble of thunder and the distant flash of lightning. I remember tears pouring down my face, I remember not being able to stop smiling.

When I whispered “Thor, you’re here.” my words were met with Thunder.

I’ve had times over the three, soon to be four years of worshiping Thor where I’ve stopped worshiping, or have been distracted by a crisis of faith. For a time i thought I had mistaken Thor’s call for Cernunos, but every time I was drawn back to Thor. 

I feel that he has been watching and waiting for longer than I was aware of him. From the time I was a wee babe in arms, my mother taking me out onto the front porch to listen to thunderstorms. I always slept through them, content and safe. 

Today, December 31 2020, I took two of the beeswax candles my spouse got me and used one to devote to Thor, and one to Odin. I poured wine and sat in contemplation in front of the idol I have of Thor. At the end, I tool off my Mjolnir necklace and blackened it in the flame from the candles. The soot and ash gathered in the cracks and crevices of it, staying even after I wiped it clean. The details stand out more. 

The edges of my little hammer are worn, showing the nature of the metal underneath... But it is beautiful. My first Mjolnir. Symbol of my bond and my word.

I think I want to incorporate blackening the hammer as part of my devotional each week. The flame from a candle isn’t enough to damage it, and the repeated blackening provides a physical representation of the strengthening of this bond. 

That’s all for now. I hope I can keep up with this. It would be nice to share more, and find more people who are worshipers of Thor.