And I Am Now Nothing

[charlottesarahscrivener-blog]

MY NOTES FROM “THE SACRED ISLE, BELIEF AND RELIGION IN PRE-CHRISTIAN IN IRELAND”

by DAITHI O’HOGAIN (associate professor of irish folklore) 1999, published by Collins press. • The necropolis of the dead would be the centre of power for those seeking to establish a particular ancestor cult • There is evidence that the equinoxes had great importance in Neolithic times. Probably as markers of sowing and harvest • Winter solstice was also marked • Sun was possibly considered as the ultimate ancestor • A rock “cup mark” was dug into tomb stones, representing the realm of death from which there was no escape • Evidence points to a belief that the dead souls left in the rays of the sun, perhaps the winter solstice sun? And that pregnant women should lie in the sun so a soul could be given to the unborn. • The power of stones to provide a mutually protective barrier between the living and the dead may rise from funerary practices such as cairns and leaving quartz stones at graves • Later there seems to have been a rationale of death involving some kind of post-existence within the landscape • Cremation was a way of releasing the dead • Votive offerings were not touched or removed even though very valuable • Votive offerings often left in water • Animals and/or humans buried beneath structures as their guardians, or near treasure for the same reason. • 3 faced deities representing the ability to see all realties at once. • Rivers belong to female spirits from the otherworld • Birds in particular were used for divination • Spells were spoken in spontaneous poetry, in fact this ability was the test of magical powers. • Those who used magic could speak “both honey and poison” • Not looking behind you/not looking back after sacred experience • Afterlife was seen as a new and valuable sphere of existence • Red – primary colour of otherworld • A seer can become different animals in order to gain a complete understanding of the world as it is.

[coldalbion]

Bolding is mine.

[bodaciousbanshee-deactivated202]

OOH 

tagging for reference

[elphame--bound-deactivated20181]

Ancestors Master Post : The Mighty Dead & Beloved Dead

This is a collection of articles and information pertaining to Ancestral work with both The Beloved Dead (ancestors of blood, family, familiar ancestors) & The Mighty Dead (ancestors of spirit, witchcraft). The practices that surround working with the dead, benevolent necromancy, ancestral worship, and altars, and offerings. 

Who’s Who : Ancestors (Greenstag)

Ancestral Practice, Altars & The Mighty Dead (Wildhunt)

Altars to the Beloved & Mighty Dead (Sarahannelawless)

Ancestral Altars & Rituals (Sarahannelawless)

In Search of The Mighty Dead (Pantheos)

Ancestor Altars (AFWcraft)

Honoring the Dead in the Northern Tradition (Northernpaganism)

Dem Bones (Newworldwitchery) 

Dancing with the Ancestors (Walkingthehedge)

What is Necromancy (Greenstag)

For the Ancestors (Northernpaganism)

Related Articles 

Drying & Preparing Graveyard Dirt (Unfetteredwood)

Recipe for New Flesh (Walkingthehedge)

Nature Friendly Offering Stones (Unfetteredwood)

Mullen Candles & Torches (Unfetteredwood) 

Creating an Ancestor Garden (Unfetteredwood)

Plants for the Dying & Deceased (Unfetteredwood)

[coldalbion]

So you're a hard polytheist and conceptualise each god as being a distinct entity apart from each other god, but do you think gods could have shared origins? One god eventually evolving into several in disparate cultures or eras? Specifically, I'm wondering if Freyr could be or share an origin with some sort of faerie king archetype.

Well. the old chestnut on this debate is of course the Odin/Woden/Guodan/Wodan/Wotan/Wodhanaz complex. Are they all different names for the same god, or what? There’s a variety of answers but it seems the genaral consensus seems to be yes, albeit viewed through the lenses of slightly different cultures. Personal experience suggests a nuance which scholars miss; a kind of qualified ‘yes…but…’

Add in the Indo-European situation and the way we have similarities and crossed domains with Rudra and Siva and things get sticky. When dealing with Freyr, there’s certainly something to be said for the linkage with the Faerie King aspect - after all, he is said to have received Alfheim as a tooth-gift, isn’t he?

Part of the difficulty is that the direct mapping of alf-kind onto faerie isn’t direct one for one territory. Ideas of what ‘faerie’ is evolved over time, and in different ways in differing cultures. Personally, I very much see connexions between Freya-as-Seidmistress, the figure of the wandering volva, the Faerie Sibyl concept, and the Queen of Elphame.

One thing hard polytheists seem to have in their favour is the sense of agency attributed to gods. They have their own agenda, so it may very well be that a being that is known to one culture may be known diffirently to another culture  Hell, YHVH looks like two different deities when you contrast the Old Testament with the New. Is this evolution, or things being seen from a different angle? I couldn’t rightly say.

Depending on what the faerie are seen as also dictates how the archetype is shaped; are they dead folk or ancestors, fallen celestials, nature spirits, some mix of the foregoing or something else entirely? Again I have my suspicions, but that blurry liminality is the only hallmark I trust in this regard.

.Is it possible that Freyr influenced the Faerie King archetype? Well, assuming we’re using archetype as a designator for a constellation of forms, stories and powers, sure. After all, Odin and Woden have influenced depictions of wizards, via Lord of the Rings, for the past 60 years, and certainly before that in terms of Odin showing up as a ‘devil’ at the crossroads in the 17th Century Swedish witch-trials.

.With gods, I think it’s especially important to realise that ‘is’ actually means ‘seems-to-be’. Case in point is the way also, that Marvel-Loki seems to be a shape that Myth-Loki likes to approach certain folks in, until that shappe is no longer required. So perhaps to think in terms of evolution-as-progression is a bit of a misnomer - to say gods-are-definitely-responsible-for-archetypes may be missing the fact that gods can also use those shapes to convey certain things or commqunicate with us.

So, to circle back to your original question: personally, it’s a strong possibility, but I think to say that Freyr is THE Faerie King goes a little far. I suspect there are many many queens and kings, to some degree. I hope that makes some kind of sense?

[theheadlesshashasheen-deactivat]

I am in complete agreement that there are ‘many’ Fairy Kings and Queens, of different origins. Some are Gods who had carved out a significant place in cultures and couldn’t be fully abandoned; some are an outcropping of popular culture (Oberon / Oberion springs to mind), and some spirits who became co-mingled with fairies due to the fluidity of Early Modern Myth (like the Sibylline fairies).

The first thing to keep in mind is that myths with fairies can be relatively recent or old: the ‘Wilde Hunt’ / Furious Horde is an Indo-European myth that took on new traits as it was dispersed across Europe (eventually with individuals like Wodan leading it), for example.  The way they intermingled, in my mind, is more important in the end than what the ‘archetypes’ for them were.

[coldalbion]

Another thing to bear in mind is that, the  longer you do this shit, the  more you begin to realise that the distinction between individual and collective grows increasingly blurry, Both African Dispora religions and Graeco-Roman religions, as well as certain sections of the Grimoires, seem to suggest that one can encounter a localised or personal form of a god, spirit or whatever. palomayombe’s Lucero is a Lucero but it is very probably different to another practitioner’s - and that’s fine.

Looking at the conception of spirit-courts in folklore shows us quite clearly that this idea is very old and very widespread. To use the monarchy analogy, an entity may not be the king, but can carry the authority of the king. Work with that spirit becomes work with that authority, so that, in certain esoteric concepts, one becomes initiated into that ‘court’.

(This is very roughly, also the basis of Apostolic Succession and other initiatic traditions. I have taken gross liberties in saying that, but I hope you get the idea.)

This also means that human dead can join these ‘courts’ and be points of contact with deity, which again, is roughly hero-cultus in a nutshell.

[coldalbion]

Reblog because queenofswords may not have seen.

[bayoread-deactivated20200607]

Notes on the Dead, the Chthonioi and Hero Cult

The dead drink the libations and the blood.

Banquets for the dead. To bring good things up with them.

The anger of the dead is particularly feared – so they must be appeased.

The snake is connected to death. Thought that the spine of the deceased turned into a snake. (Okay, woah)

In Homeric language, the psyche leaves a man and travels to Aides. ‘Breath’ though not the ‘soul’, the mirror image of a person.

The psychai are intangible, they must first drink the blood before remembering themselves.

Charon ferries souls across the Acheron, NOT the Styx.

Persephone, Queen of the dead, has the authority to exact the punishment of evildoers ‘all days’, forever; so it is advisable to win her favour by appropriate offerings.

Heroes get their own islands. (Whey!)

The graves are approached by the defiled, without any garland and with the hair untied.

For the dead there is a ground-level hearth, eschara, or a pit, bothros.

The sacrificial victim is bled into the ground and rituals are conducted at night. Black victims are used and libations are called choai.

Underworld gods used in curses.

‘The corn comes from the dead.’  Food and hence life comes from the depths of the earth.

When sowing the seed the farmer prays to Chthonic Zeus and pure Demeter.

Hero – A figure from Epic poetry and then later a deceased person who exerts from his grave a power for good or evil and demands appropriate honour.

A hero cult involves setting apart one particular grave, known as a heroon, from other burials by marking off a special precinct, by bringing sacrifices and votive gifts, and occasionally by building a special grave marker.

Gods and Heroes are invoked in oaths.

The main event, is the cultic feast of the living in the company of, and in honour of, the hero. As a rule, the hero receives his enagismata once a year on the day appointed in the festival calendar.

The hero is always confined to a specific locality. (Traditionally linked to the grave but could this be used for birth places too?)

The Gods are remote, the Heroes are close at hand.

It is some extraordinary quality that makes the hero; something unpredictable and uncanny is left behind and is always present. The Heroon is always passed in silence.

[winterborn-ironboned]

Genuine question about the triple goddess post - I've read about female deities (in groups of three) appearing on ancient stones in Celtic parts of ancient Europe. Is there just no further evidence that they were venerated or is there another reason Celts don't have triple goddesses?

If you’re talking about the Mother cults it’s really difficult to say. A lot of times people will turn and claim this as backup to the existence of triple goddesses but there really isn’t a whole lot of evidence besides the depictions to back it up.

Honestly it hearkens back to Neolithic polytheistic practices but since it’s impossible to relate that in any way to the mythos of the Tuatha it’s not a strong ground to stand on.

I have mentioned this a lot, but there was a practice of doubling and tripling mention of goddesses (specifically Brighid) to denote how important they were, which can be (if read literally) confusing because you have a set of three sisters with the same name. Honestly it just shows status.

The only deity in the Gaelic sphere that could even potentially fall into a “triple” goddess form is Beara, the Scottish hag goddess who would age through the course of the year, grow old, go to sleep and re-emerge as a young woman again. But she is one single deity and there isn’t much about her. And I’ll note that Cailleach Bheur, the Irish goddess of similar persuasion does not do this at all. She prowls during the fall and winter, then sleeps for the rest of the year or retreats to the mountains until the year turns dark again.

Ultimately the Celts (using this in it’s proper context of an umbrella term) were pretty specifically hard polytheists. Their gods walked the earth, they weren’t nebulous concepts of power and affluence. To that end, it’s not a logical jump for this 3-in-1 business. If you wanted to read up on that, googling Robert Graves and the triple goddess will lend you some perspective. He basically invented the idea.

[vlfgrim]

Hello! I want to make a patronus-like wolf pack to serve as a protection and source of support. I heard you have experience with ding this with your hound spirits? I'm hoping you could give me advice with it, as this would be the first time I'm doing something like this.

First things, I do need to say that my Hounds are an extension concept and inspired by some seriously consistent hallucinations that I had when I was younger. 

In technical terms, they’re most related to egregores/tulpas (though I cannot remember the appropriateness of using the term tulpa these days. It has connotations to be appropriative.) Either way, it’s effectively a thoughtform inspired by something that used to absolutely terrify me and damn near ran my life for a number of years. Eventually I got healthier and the things that were really causing me to break into hallucinations were handled.

It’s strongly rooted in Chaos theory and I’d definitely point you in the directions of carpeumbra and bodaciousbanshee (I don’t think the other blogger I knew to be well-informed on it is still around.) (honorable mention to mothwinged )

As far as advice, I’m not really sure how to direct you because what I have is uniquely connected to my mental illness and really comes from less of an intentional action and more of an idea built over time.

[bodaciousbanshee-deactivated202]

Ah, okay, so most internet chaos mages use the word “tulpa” to mean servitor, but they are not the same thing. In the correct, Tibetan sense is a psychic or sacred image or astral body made to house/be a mask for an existing energy or entity. It is their image that shapes how they manifest to you. This is why when some spirits appear to people they look exactly like x classical painting of them. It is similar to the idea of a religious fetish (not the kinky kind, but like an idol or poppet), but the connotations of “fetish” are a bit negative because they actually derive from a Latin word meaning “false. artificially made,” so it implies that a “fetish” does not house a real spirit. This word was brought to English from  Portuguese and reflects a dismissive  attitude towards the legitimacy of the African diasporic religion. In the Tibetan tradition an image of a god, although it is a physical, man made object, still houses the omnipresent being it is created after, and is respected as such and communed with. 

Now, an egrigore is a servitor (man-made servant) or thoughtform spirit that is made or at least fed and worked with by multiple people. I go into the egrigore vs god thing here.

Now, what withbloodinherteeth did with giving a name and form to spirits that had already appeared to her, so as to better interact with them, and working them into her personal practice and cosmology…that is creating a tulpa. 

It sounds like what you are talking about is servitor creation. 

This can be achieved by learning basic chaos magic.

Try Practical Sigil Magic by Frater U.D. and Liber Null by Peter J. Carroll

One brief warning about  Carroll and his purely psychological magical model is he is a racist asshole who thinks that ancestor veneration is bogus and gods and the spirits of the dead do not exist objectively and that girmoire magic, necromancy, and ancient, indigenous religions have no power or practical magical relevance. However, his work is still essential for any practicing mage, witch, etc., practitioner of magic to read and acknowledge because it has really shaped how magic is viewed and practiced today. 

[winterborn-ironboned]

30 Day of Deity Devotion: Day 5: Members of the family

The Sisters of the Badb

Badb Catha, Macha and Anand are the daughters of Ernmas, a member of the Tuatha dé Danann and the mother of the goddesses:  Ériu, Banba and Fódla and the gods Glonn, Gnim, Coscar, Fiacha and Ollom. She was killed in the first battle of Mag Tuired.

The god Crom Cruach is proposed to be the son of one of the members of the Morrigna, proposedly Anand (sometimes known as Morrigu)

My own UPG (unsubstantiated personal gnosis) and research leads me to believe that there are more than 3 members of the Morrigan group, though it tends to refer to them in groups of three and that one of these goddesses is the daughter of Cailleach Bheur.

[thebloodybones]

[winterborn-ironboned]

💀 the A N C E S T O R S

life beyond death, preserved in memories. these are the ways you remember them: in photographs and portraits, in hand-me-downs, family albums, attic-found love letters, the heirloom pearls. when you close your eyes you can hear your blood singing, echoing back and back. through them, you stand tall, flesh taut on your bones. so light your candles, hold your vigils; you’ll be lying among bones some time soon.

[winterborn-ironboned]

personal deities

The Sky Chaser the sin eaters mate

Where the Sin Eater is consumptive in the continuation and preservation of life and existence, the Sky Chaser is the devourer, raw hunger and desire. Emotion and feeling and pure want. As devoted as he is to his Mate, he looks at Man with derision, thinking her attempts to continue bridging the gap between the Wilds and the world to be a futile effort.

He is a trailblazer and has been called a worldbreaker, a name that he despises as much as he despises his siblings and their Northern captors. Disdain for a cage and the sense of duty that he sees as the ultimate downfall of the world drives him to a ferocious demeanor that ultimately comes down to the protection of his freedom and the survival of his Wilds.

More tutelary in nature than his mate, he is the hand of hard experience. If one should learn to hunt, one must first feel the fear of starvation. If on should learn to fight, one must first learn to be afraid of losing their life. He stood at the edges of armies, waiting for wars to be fought, grinning and howling with the warriors who called on the wolfs spirit for strength. Like the black winged Sisters, he often chose the side that he favored, wreaking havoc on the battlefield in a blood kind of ecstasy.

When the Sin Eater was betrayed, he vowed that if Man was so afraid of the Eyes in the Dark, he would give them something to be afraid of. As much as he was considered a nightmare beast in the ages before Man forgot their names, he reinvented the fear of the dark afterwards.

The cost of such rage is self-destruction and he mourns his mate and waits for her, caught between one form and another, seeking their Names and seeking to return to the world that he betrayed in the rage following her loss.

[pagansuncensored-deactivated202]

Rewriting Christian hymns by subbing in references to the Goddess is tacky and disrespectful, and if you don't know the theological concepts you're painting over, the result will be nonsense to boot. Please do not.

[winterborn-ironboned]

personal deities

The Sin Eater

Part of my pantheon includes dead gods, which is a term that I’ve coined myself in reference to divine entities that have lost their god status, had it removed from them or fell out of time and history until they dissolved in such a way that they could be remanifested into something else. The Sin Eater is one such as these. 

Her origins have links within existing Norse, proto-Irish and pagan Irish mythos, one of the things that has led me to be able to accept her existence is these links and the reality of the way she fits into the patterns of the gods I already follow. She and her mate, The Sky Chaser fill two roles in terms of the relationship that the wild things have with man, and that predators have with their prey.

A primordial figure of the Northern Wilds, she is one of the First Wolves, a consumptive spirit and pathfinder. She is a healer, in the way a wild animal knows to eat greens to force them to retch up an offending meal, or the instinctive way they know to hunt or forage. As man came to the world and began building their houses and castles, she attempted to bridge the gap between the Wilds and the Men who were forgetting how to speak to them. She helped them learn how to tread the forests, which plants would kill and which would heal. 

A psychopomp in the way that she walked the edges of so many worlds, she took special interest in dying warriors, the ones who sobbed and cried in agony as they lay alone in their blood. Sin Eater was the name given to her by man, as she ended their lives for them in the dark of the bloodied sky and easing their passage into the next world.

The further than Man removed himself from the Wilds, the more he began to fear it, and the more desperately she sought to bridge the gap; until finally Man began to hate the Eyes in the Dark and hunted her down, tricking her with hope that they were coming back to the world they had finally denied and began to destroy. 

[winterborn-ironboned]

30 Days of Deity Devotion: Day 4: Your Favorite Myths About This Deity

The Sisters of the Badb

Rather than a singular favorite myth, my favorite stories concerning the Sisters have them acting as adversaries or catalytic figures. Referencing her antagonistic relationship with Cu Chulainn, Finna Mac Cumhail, the Dagda and the Fomorians and Tuatha alike, one can see that the Morrigu and her sisters are impartial agents of chaos. Their primary concern is the continuation of the prosperity of the land, not the man who is ruling it.

In her encounter with the Dagda, in which she allows him to bed her and then tells him that she knows of the Fomorian’s plans and will herself kill their king Indech. When Lugh sent the Dagda to the Fomorians to spy on them, he is manipulated into gorging himself on an inordinately huge amount of porridge and when he is embarrassed by the ridicule that the Fomorians placed on him under the guise of their well-known generosity, he skulked off to the beach.

Here he encounters a beautiful young lady who taunts and harasses him until he can relieve himself of the food that had gorged and limited him so and after this they coupled and had a bit of a tiff about going to battle. She reveals that she is the daughter of Indech and that she will help the Tuatha by holding back the Fomorian forces and taking on a ninth of the army on her own.

While it’s not explicitly mentioned that this daughter of Indech is actually a guise of Morrigu, it does certainly beg to question the parallels of these exploits and the ultimate success of the Tuatha in this conflict.

The legend itself confirms some of my own UPG as it mirrors a number of legends about the Cailleach as well as some of the distinctive relations of the Fomorians to the Tuatha and the Morrigan.

[soloontherocks-moving-refol-blog]

Sorry if this sounds really dumb, but initially about 6-ish years ago, I got into practicing Hellenic polytheism. Then I started reading other polytheistic works and realized I also love norse polytheism. Is it possible to practice both religions or do I have to pick only one?

If the gods are alright with it.

Generally you should approach each pantheon in their own religious tradition. Worshiping Greek deities in a *greek* fashion, kharis, khernips, Hellenic prayer style, blah blah blah, and worshiping Norse deities in a *Norse* fashion. As opposed to trying to worship Norse deities the same way you do Greek ones.

[winterborn-ironboned]

Agreed. And one of my other recommendations is setting down a solid routine, so everyone gets the attention they may be asking for. 

[pagansuncensored-deactivated202]

I'm the creating their own religion anon and no I'm not otherkin/deitykin/whatever, I'm just more interested because nothing else has called to me religion wise

.

[vlfgrim]

Hey Anon, 

As far as creating your own religion, I might recommend developing something orthopraxic rather than theology based and then seeing if there’s an entity idea that you could subscribe to. It builds into a lot of the theory behind PC Paganism, which is ultimately based in Chaos Magick theory.

So first things first, do some research into that. I might recommend picking carpeumbra or bodaciousbanshee‘s brain on the subject. And they probably have their own recommendations.

Remember that borrowing things from open existing traditions is okay so long as you’re not completely redirecting them and claiming that they are supposed to be that way. Basically be respectful. For example: having circles of standing stones, taking blót or Kemetic ritual formats in order to base your own stuff on is technically okay, but do not do this in a copy paste sort of method. That’s very disrespectful, but take inspiration from them if you will. 

There are a few personally developed faiths out there, I’m listing a few so you can look at the information that the founders have made available and see if you can get an idea on what you might want to do. X, X, X

[soloontherocks-moving-refol-blog]

In hard polytheism view, are we worshipping the same gods? Like, is your Apollo and mine the same "person"? If so, why does upg and god spouses and divination and things differ so much? Or are the gods so beyond our understanding that they can be everyone's personal upg and stuff? Asking because You're the most knowledgeable Hellenic polytheist I know, i guess. And I know you're very hard polytheist.

Your Apollo and my Apollo? Yes.

Your Venus and my Aphrodite? No.

Your Artemis and my Hekate? Fuck no.

As for upg differences, there’s a couple possibilities all coming into play here:

1. Some people lie. To look special, to abuse their “authority”, for attention, whatever.

2. Some people are wrong. They’re uneducated, they’re new, they have poor discernment, they can’t tell the difference between UPG and wishful thinking, they were influenced by someone ELSE’s UPG, whatever.

3. Some people worship different aspects of the same god. The Ares I worship as the master of passionate emotions may be the same Ares as the one someone else worships as the patron of soldiers, but he has different connotations and a different “personality”. Another example: Apollo the healer is the same god as Apollo the warlike Destroyer of Evil but might approach a worshiper in very different ways.

4. Some people have or need to have a different relationship with the Gods. I think we both agree that deities are self-aware sentient sapient beings. They are People. They may be far greater and more inconcievable than us, but they are still People and they still have relationships and preferences. People I work with see a very different me than people I date, who see a very different me than people I dislike.

Someone might be more delicate and require a bit of coddling. Somebody might have a long and thrilling history with a god and be more comfortable or laidback dealing with them. Somebody might be oathbound or a priest and have a different understanding of the deity than a layperson. Some people might be completely and utterly full of shit disrespectful little bitches.

There are a lot of factors at work, basically.

[soloontherocks-moving-refol-blog]

Reblogging to tag.

[winterborn-ironboned]

30 Days of Deity Devotion: Day 4: Your Favorite Myths About This Deity

Óðinn

With Norse mythology being more commonly available than legends of the Hag or even the obscured legends that mention the Sisters outside of the Ulster cycle, I’m generally hard pressed to find a favorite.

In general, Óðinn’s tendency to wander appeals to me greatly as I’m a dream-stepper in my own right and I find that most things come more easily to me during the process of motion. This is either on horseback, in a car, on a motorcycle or just simply walking. 

In the idea that I believe sacrifice to be one of the core tenants of my practice, the pursuit of the knowledge of runes is one of my favorite tales. Óðinn bound himself to Yggdrasil, hanging over the Well of Urd and pondering the Norns scribblings in the trunk of the world tree. For nine days and nights he hung like this, stabbed in the side with a spear and alone on the edge of life and death. At the point that he finally released himself, he understood the magic of them.

In the Havamal, he is noted to have said that he was “given to Odin, myself to myself,” so in a way sacrificing a part of himself for the better growth of the entirety of who he was. This loss and intentional shattering of self is something I find myself constantly pursuing, and if ever I think that I’m too tired to do it again; Old One-Eye is reminding me that he hung himself from a tree for nine days to learn how to read symbols.

[vlfgrim]

Will you tell me about cruel gods? Nothing specific about them, just... general things

This question actually made me sit down and think because I really wasn’t sure how to answer it. Thank you for sending it in.

Cruel gods are proud, they demand nothing less than everything within you. When your knees give out and your chest aches from sobbing your prayers through clenched teeth, then they are satisfied. Understanding of the divine comes from agony.

They are silent, always looking on, always watching the roads before you as you choose and choose again, until you no longer can understand which path is easier or which path is kinder. All roads are narrow and dangerous and eventually the stones will stop cutting your feet open.

Cruel gods smile when you fail, because they know that in the blink of an eye you will remember who you are and see the strength in your shoulders rise up. They did not teach you suffering for nothing.

They demand sacrifice of the most dear. Sometimes never to be returned because if it was something that you could live without, then it wasn’t as necessary as you believed. And while the hunger twists your belly and your heart into knots you could never hope to untangle, they are subtly sharpening the blades in your bones. Sometimes the best choice is to cut it loose.

Cruel gods point you to the places to test you, the places where you prove yourself again and again. Cruel gods look on as you pray, because they know that you have taught yourself how to survive and that your prayers are reminders to yourself more than anything else.