🌿🪔🐍Digital🏛️Lararium🐍🪔🌿

side blog for my spiritual interests animism+eclectic paganism

[digital-lararium]

Ty, 32, they/them, living on Nacotchtank and Piscataway lands; this is just a place to collect posts related to my exploration of paganism

I am first and foremost an animist and connect most with my local land, water, and wind spirits; house spirits; and genii locorum. I am examining my own beliefs about divinity and deity through a broad, eclectic pagan path. Building relationships with Hermes, Odin, Dionysus/Bacchus/Liber, and Vesta as well as seasonal devotion to the Cailleach and Freyr. Deconstructing decades of Catholicism and compulsory christocentrism

Since it regrettably needs to be stated:

No fascists, nazis, folkists, racists, homophobes, transphobes—bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated

White supremacy has no place in any form of paganism

Fuck AI, stop the data centers, no Keystone pipeline, protect Mauna Kea

No one is illegal on stolen land

Respect for Indigenous peoples and closed practices is paramount

Don’t be an asshole

[starweaverblog]

I have always adored how caring and loving Hermes is to his siblings especially to Dionysus. The love and dedication to Dionysus, to raise him despite the dangers, he was always there for him in his ups and downs.

[child-of-earth-and-starry-heaven]

Let us call Dionysus to the gates of our cities and homes. A man who can dance with plants and honor beasts, who can be a woman and an androgyne and an animal, is more than a gender, he is a celebration. A hive of humming bees. A secret network of fungus ready to erupt as the air moistens. A murmuration of birds. A cluster of grapes, a throng of singing women. A magician.

—Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand

[rain--goblin]

I've got a bone to pick with Odin only being acknowledged and depicted as a war god.

If you try to find art or statues or information, it's almost completely just that; Hard ass war general.

Wise wanderer is treated as an after thought,

And trickster and god of madness is completely ignored. (And that's not all the roles and titles, I promise)

Maybe I'm just salty cause I'm not dying on a battlefield and instead have my nose in a book and head in the clouds, but seeing the other depictions get ignored is low-key annoying.

Also the "hard ass" part? Listen, my gods he's not that fucking bad. That part is just toxic masculinity propaganda spread by the less savory people who found heathenry. He definitely expects work and effort, and will eventually have you saying "I'm tired of this grandpa!", but he's not as awful as gym bro Pinterest quotes pretend he is.

[lost-at-thecrossroads]

Do you ever worry about the deities who aren't widely worshipped?

Or even really spoken about much?

The ones who fall to time?

Or do you think that a God never truly dies but only sleeps?

And that, some day, if someone finds them then they can be worshipped and brought to life once more?

[digital-lararium]

Happy Vestalia!

Celebrating and giving thanks to Vesta today. Marking the holiday by cleaning Vesta’s shrine in my house lararium and offering her a handcrafted crown of fresh roses, a mola salsa of hand-ground barley and salt, wildflower honey from bees belonging to members of my extended family, and herbed olive oil gifted by my mother.

Vesta was the first deity to whom I dedicated a shrine. It is with her I have built my most formal relationship through small weekly and monthly rituals sharing barley and keeping lit an (electric) flame. I bought this red lantern on impulse more than a decade before I ever entertained the idea of reaching out to divinities. I never had a use for it but nor I could bring myself to part with it. It belonged to her all along(!) and the moment I made the decision to dedicate space as a lararium that it would be my hearth. Most of my other relationships with deities tend towards informality, introspection, spontaneity, experience, and peregrination. Rooting my bond with Vesta in ritual, within my home, provides the bedrock for all other relationships I seek to build.

She is the porch light left on for the expected returning. She is the welcome of cool bedsheets at the end of a long day. She is the protective darkness and solemn quiet against an overwhelming world. Today and all days I thank her for offering me and mine safety and respite 🙏

[sacredlittleember]

land spirits do not have to be dramatic.

sometimes reverence for land starts very simply:

learning the names of local plants. noticing where water gathers. thanking a tree before taking from it. picking up trash. leaving a place better than you found it. sitting quietly long enough to feel the mood of the land.

animism is not always spectacle.

sometimes it is relationship, attention, and care.

[skaldish]

To get out of the habit of thinking of the Norse or Irish gods as being "gods of" stuff, try to think about what their occupations are instead.

Are they a chief or a king of something? Are they a protector of humanity? Are they skilled at magic and therefore could be considered a wizard, mage, or magician? Are they a warrior? Are they an entertainer? Are they a teacher?

And if you want to play this on advanced mode: Don't try to define the gods' occupations according to what they do in their myths. Think about what they do in relation to us and our societies right here and now, and in relation to the real world.