#edgecraft

[overelegantstranger]

does anyone else have a "i didn't know who to pray to for this and i can't find out right now so i'm gonna try you" god

and also an associated question: does anyone have any disability related upg for thor? i know loki is the usual go-to god for disability but i just wondered

[overelegantstranger]

I can grow beyond this: a sigil for personal strength in the face of the bigotry all around us, for when we cannot dig ourselves out of the hole our oppressors try to bury us in.

[overelegantstranger]

i'm keep trying to figure out how my sets of beliefs work together, which i suppose is probably a common thing for people who worship two pantheons, but what i came here to say is that i'm grateful for yggdrasil. I'm grateful that layered worlds and multiple dimensions are right there in the faith, i'm grateful that the interconnected nature of this place and annwn is not negated by my norse faith and nor is my understanding of multiple worlds in the astrophysics sense this is an overly !! word vomit but i am trying to see my beliefs as a whole and i just. overflowed.

[overelegantstranger]

Self Care as a Devotional Act

so i’ve been meaning to make this post for a bit but somewhat ironically, the Brain wasn’t playing ball.

Disclaimer: I’m heathen and welshpol, so these things will all have a focus on Frigg, Odinn, and Bran. Mostly Frigg. But I feel, nevertheless, that you could apply them to your own practice with very little jiggerypokery - I don’t think they’re overspecific things in and of themselves.

Firstly, I think the most important thing is to figure out what aspects of self care you need the most help with. For me, I live at home with my parents, so eating and drinking are taken care of by my mum going ‘molly make a brew’ and actively noticing when I’m not eating so much. So mostly, what I need the added motivation of a devotional act with are chores, writing (both academic and personal) and Getting Outside. Obviously this will be different for everyone but hopefully the principle is sound enough.

I think it’s easy enough to go Frigg-homemaker-chores, but while that’s perfectly valid it’s not so much what I want to get at. What I mean when I say that chores, and the self care there - whether the self care in question is keeping your room clean-ish, or doing the washing up, or just the chore as low-impact exercise - is more about asserting yourself as owning or protecting the house.

For me, having that layering of intention is what makes it effective as self care, and as devotional act - I mean, of course, if that doesn’t agree with you that’s entirely okay, but for me, I need a little extra behind the act so that I have more of a sense of purpose. Ascribing an extra meaning to the act, I feel, connects me more deeply to the act, to the meaning of the act, and to my mental state. This, to me, gives it an emphasis that makes it easier to consider it devotional, but also attaches a kind of mindfulness.*

Odinn-centered devotional acts are more slippery for me to talk about, but I’m going to give it a go. Writing is an act of devotion, and previously this has helped hugely with keeping up with the daily-writing thing people always recommend, but I’m not sure that quite falls under self care. What my Odinn-centric self care is about is self-ownership, which has really helped with the anxiety.

It’s hard for me to properly express this, but what I mean is owning everything that you are, that you have done. It’s kind of like self-acceptance, but it’s more about standing up and yelling yeah? what are you gonna do about it? into that void inside of yourself that judges everything you do, rather than just accepting. It’s like that Tiffany Aching selfishness quote:

But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!"

Except that it’s more about owning yourself, and your demons, than it is about other people. It’s more about insulating yourself against judgement by Knowing yourself, not by being your own worst critic but by finding a place inside yourself that you can stand, and planting your flag there. This, all of this, is what you are, is who you are, is your strength and your weakness. Owning yourself is how you face the void, how you protect yourself against voices inside and outside yourself that seek to ruin yourself. I walk my own boundaries. I know them. I own myself.

I don’t mean this as a ‘mind over matter’ or ‘think positive’ thing. It isn’t easy, and I can’t do it all the time, and I need to listen to a devotional playlist to trigger it. The thing is, though, that I find that anxiety and depression leave these little vulnerable parts of yourself floating loose, and this helps. Sometimes. When I manage it. You make a little bubble of ferocious, aggressive, self-owning defiance around you, and that’s the devotional, self-caring act.

Bran is similar. With Him, though, I ought to add that this is a more specific thing than the other two so it will depend on your practice. I guess in it’s simplest form, this act is about “connecting to nature”, which trust me, I know that sounds a neurotypical thing to say but it’s about grounding yourself in the thing that connects you to your god (or it could be more to do with landwights or ancestor veneration or whatever applies) with a specific emphasis on The Outside. Getting outside is that thing that I know I ought to do, and it’s hard, but if I look through the window of the bus at the mountains, or if I stand on a high enough place and see the sea, I think of Bran, and through the act of making engagement with the outdoors devotional it helps to ground me. It stops it from being ‘a thing my therapist recommended’ and makes it ‘a thing that helps me love Him’, with a dose of self-care on the side.

In this context I suppose Frigg-centred devotion is about connecting yourself to your dwelling-place, the place you can own and guard and protect, Odinn-centred devotion is about owning, guarding and protecting yourself, and Bran-centred devotion is about letting yourself be part of a specific wider context, and I think self-care both allows the expression of those ideas and acts as a consequence of them.

*I have my issues with the whole Mindfulness Thing, but my therapist recommended it, so ymmv as far as that helps with self care,

[overelegantstranger]

me, some days ago: gently and not really intentionally asking Eir for help getting to know Her and Her correspondences etc bc I am the closest to Her of all my gods but have the least upg about Her

me, that night: has a flash of fields upon fields of white flowers

me, the next day: has confirmation that this is either a supported correspondence or common upg (and represents either chamomile or garlic most likely)

me, almost every day since: sees a post about white flowers, including today, when garlic was mentioned also

[overelegantstranger]

after seeing that localising your pagan faith post yesterday and suddenly processing that i just moved to a house on The Marshland*, Frigg's hall can be translated as Fen-halls, and Sköll and Hati are the sons of Fenrir, He who lives in the marshes, i'm like. Oh. Oh, okay

[francesjones16]

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