#newbie devotee challenge

[liminalmessenger]

Newbie Devotee Challenge - Day 15

Create an aesthetic moodboard for your deity. Pick a variety of images that you associate with your deity and arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing way. Give this to your deity as an offering.

[pysksos]

21 day Newbie Devotee challenge #3

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?

United - (also the 'Grand' Bucca) as a whole and united being, generally invoked and worshipped this way.

Divine Androgyne - highlights their role as an equal balance of two different paired aspects.

God-Goddess - poking a little fun at the often binary separation of deities.

Dhu - Literally 'Black'. The aspect of Bucca that deals with storms, undoing, binding, emotional wellbeing, baneful magic, death, decay, introspection, binding, emotional wellbeing, harvest, solemn ancestor work, new moon, wintertide.

Androgyne Destroyer - refers to the 'destructive' aspects & the divine androgyne.

Master of Wintertide - rules winter from the 31st of October to the 1st of May.

Mother of Storms - They give rise to storms and nurture them into power.

Chief of Beasts - They care for and guide animals (especially wild or feral ones) through the harsh winter months.

Gwidder - literally 'White'. The aspect of Bucca that deals with fair weather, communication, festivals, healing, regeneration, growth, sowing of crops and seeds, mazing, birth and rearing of livestock, good fish catches, celebration, the full moon, summertide.

Fair Creatrix - highlights their responsibility for creation and growth

Mistress of Summertide - Rules from the 1st of May to the 31st of October.

Father of Calm Seas - ensures the summer seas are, for the most part, gentle and welcoming with soothing words.

King of Land - Caretakes the land and it's harvest (both domestic, foraged food and otherwise.

I enjoy calling them "my dear", it's sweet for the both of us :-)

[godofsunlight]

Devotee Challenge, 9

Discuss your daily/weekly/monthly/etc. worship “schedule.” What do you do for your deity? What offerings do you give? How often do you pray? And so on. Are you happy with how much/little time you give your deity? If not, what could you do to change that?

Honestly, I really don’t have a consistent schedule. It’s something I’d like to work on and I’m sure Apollo would like me to work on. I’d like to set it up where I’m celebrating more of the festivals and honoring sacred days (like the 7th for Apollo). My worship right now is very much just whenever I have the spoons available......but Apollo is telling me to give myself a little more credit than just that since I do a lot of devotional acts and pray often. Still, I’d like to do more and do it with more structure.

But, I will usually offer burning candles/incense. Or, if I have it, wine. Sometimes I’ll even make a cuppa tea to offer or give chocolate caramel candy. I wear different perfumes/jewelry and sometimes I’ll coordinate an outfit to honor him or another god.

My main worship though is prayer. Most of the time, I’m really informal, too. For me, it’s hard to be formal, so I talk to him like a respected friend. I’ll tell him everything on my mind, tell him how pretty he is (because he is!), and I just go “I love you!!!!!💕” a lot lol. While I’m not really happy with not having a worship “schedule” per say, I am happy about how much time I give to Apollo. He’s basically on my mind 24/7.

[stray-wanderer]

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.

Ones that I know

Horses

Trident

Bulls

Fish 

Other symbols I didn’t know

white pine tree 

ash tree

wild celery 

dolphins 

I think they all fit, one that I wasn’t expecting was wild celery and I don’t know why I forgot dolphins were a symbol of Poseidon. 

[bookwyrmbran]

Grimnir

Trying to pin a face on Fjolnir is an exercise in frustration. With this I think about some of the strongest associations I have for Him: masks, hooded cloaks, the spear, facelessness, the eye that sees too much, breath and wind and ravens’ wings bleeding into each other, everything motion, everything changing moment to moment. 

The spear which transfixes. The eye which sees. These are the constants; the rest is shifting, is seidr, is madness.

[poly-pomegranate]

Newbie Devotee Challenge

Day Ten

What method(s) do you usually use to contact your deity? (tarot, godphone, ect) Why do you like using that method?

I mostly just pray to the gods if I want to contact them, as I'm a bit nervous about hearing back from them directly. However, I have used a pendulum to speak with Hades before and I use runes to communicate with the gods in general.

I like pendulum because it's simple and if I'm looking for a direct answer, it's probably the best thing to go with.

And I really like runes because they allow for an answer that's more than just yes or no while still being useful.

[draig-asec]

Newbie Devotee Challenge

Day 4

»»————-　☠　————-««

Hades has a lot of imagery and symbols

Personally I asosiate him with

Keys

Skulls

Cerberus (and dogs in general actually)

Mint (Persephone has turned Minthe who had been trying to steal Hades away from her into the plant, I also associate the plant with his wife)

Pomegranate

Narcissus

The screech owl

Cypress

And Asphodel

The Bident (a two prong fork similar to Poseidon’s Trident)

I have seen these things also be asosiated with him and do believe them fitting

White Poplar Tree

The Helm of Invisibility

And Cattle (I often forget about this)

Cornucopia

»»————-　☠　————-««

[thegodskeeper]

🧿 20 Day Newbie Devotee Challenge - Odin

Day 11: Try using a different method, one that you have either never used or rarely used, to try speaking to your deity. Discuss the results.

You may be asking “Lee, why are you answering this question out of order?” The truth is… I was pretty badly shaken up. I wasn’t sure if I particularly wanted to publicly address what happened, or if I wanted to just brush the whole thing under the carpet and try something else. While I was musing on it today, the fae I work with even offered to let me break their “the pendulum is just for us” rule and let me try and talk to the Old Man through that (since I’m recovering from a flu, I didn’t take them up on it). But in the end, I decided it would be a lesson in humility and a word of warning to others if I typed up what happened when I first tried out this day’s challenge. The moral of the story is: no matter how well you know a deity, never neglect your safety measures.

The method I decided to try and use was not exactly one I hadn’t used before; shufflemancy. But in the past, Odin has been the one to essentially send random music goblins my way when he’s wanted my attention. This time, I wanted to try and use shufflemancy like a kind of guided divination, by using direct questions and letting my intuition choose the lyrics that were Odin’s answers. What went through my mind - late at night, but determined to take on the challenge - were the famous last words “shufflemancy is so casual, how hard is this gonna be?” First mistake.

The first discrepancy that should have told me I wasn’t talking to Odin was the answers. I started with simple questions with reactions I practically didn’t need godphoning for. Things that the Old Man definitely knew, and would answer a certain way. When those responses went against the norm, I put it down to ‘trying something new’. The fault, I concluded, lay with me. Either I wasn’t picking up what he was putting down, or I wasn’t asking the right questions.

The second was when he turned cruel. This is not my story to share. But the conversation took a turn that seemed out of character and unnecessarily petty, even for a god with names that include the word ‘evil’ in them. With not just myself hurt I pushed through, not immediately recognizing the damage that was done. I didn’t recognize an attack when I saw one.

The third clue was when ‘Odin’ began to push very heavily at the topic of something that I told him, ten year ago, I would never - ever - be interested in; godspousery. Now I have nothing at all against relationships with spirits, but even though I’m polyamorous it’s something that I have told every entity I work for is not for me. It might have been in past lives - it isn’t now. And so for him to try to steer me towards rethinking the idea at the end of our conversation sent me to bed confused and unsure. The nightmare that came next finally drove the point home.

I’m not going to share those details. It was violent, it was cruel and it was traumatizing. I was on edge and looking over my shoulder for the whole day afterwards, and I woke up all but screaming. But I also woke up with one very clear truth echoing in my mind; the first thing I said to my husband when he asked what was wrong. “I didn’t speak to Odin last night, and I am terrified.”

The story doesn’t end here, but this is what is important. In ten years of spiritwork, I have almost always ‘got lucky’. Nothing seriously bad has ever happened to me, even in the times I’ve dealt with malicious spirits. This one was the most malicious of all, and the warding on my home is now permanent. I have a leech I’m not going to be able to just burn off. I got complacent, and I fucked up, and I am still on edge initiating godphoning with anyone but one particular deity (not Odin, although he’s pretty pissed too) who reached out to me that night. So why is this about Odin? Well, it is, and it isn’t. But it is a warning.

When a god wears many faces, never forget to check under the mask before you make yourself vulnerable. Use your head, and don’t be afraid to ask for whatever verification puts you at ease.

Special thanks to @an-avaar-skald-and-bearsark and @arcanecalligrapher who gave me some really solid advice in both identifying the interloper, and working out how to ward against them. I... don’t think I wanted to talk about him in this post, because it’s about an Odin hiccup. But if people would like me to go into details, or have had similar experiences, feel free to drop me a line. Also, see the tags.