Hwaet!
So, listen - the cosmos is alive. It is alive because you are alive. You are alive because your ancestors were alive. And those ancestors? They took great care to realise that the world was full of things other than humans.
The trees, the rocks, the animals, all of them were interconnected, the ties between kin stretched back through the bonds of wyrd. Spirits followed family lines, and ancestors participated at feasts though they were long dead.
Many of them did not believe in magic, or viewed it with suspicion. But nonetheless they understood the importance of kinship, of coming together for the benefit of all. To be outlaw, to be outcast, was a punishment most terrible. Not only were you no longer protected by the law, but you were on your own in a world that owed you nothing.
Tied to the land, to the place you dwelt, and to the place you travelled. Were you to travel and settle somewhere new, rites were performed to name the land as your own. To curse an enemy, you might rile up the landvaettir of his realm, so that he might starve or be torn asunder.
And nor were all wights, all spirits human shaped. They blurred, they shifted and danced. A stranger on the road might be a god, or that bear watching you with unnerving intelligence might not be what it first appears.
And this my friends, is why I hate it when the world is divided, into woo, or non woo, or rational and mad, or god and man, material and spiritual.
Waes hael, friends. Be whole, not divided. You are part of something vast and rich, and there are many ways of seeing, being and doing. Our ancestors knew this - elves, giants, gods, men, hidden folk…all a wonderful variety of existences.
And all we have, if we merely do as we’re told by society, is a bunch of two-legs and then a hierarchy of things that are less than us. Which is the more impoverished worldview, I wonder?
kianamaiart
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gummygunk
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