Well Bottom Blues

When The Troth, the Heathen/Asatru organization I joined 10 years ago, published the schedule for the Winter Moot and I saw a blog to Bragi and Odin, I immediately signed up. If you’ve been here before you know I’m a writer and primarily a poet of late, and Bragi is the first among poets, bard to Asgard. There’s a print-out picture of him above my sometimes dusty altar-shelf, anda praise poem to him in the magazine holder next to it.

I’ve only attended one organized pagan event before, a Spring Solstice (Ostara if you will) on the banks of Bayou St. John. A friend who is a Rational Heathen (not gods, thanks) is a member. I brought the most he-man Viking thing I could think of cucumber sandwiches. Hey, it’s Spring and I’ve never made cucumber sandwiches all cup-up, cozy as tea before.

I did bring my short horn and a bottle of mead, and at some point in the celebrations I asked everyone to join me in sumbel, inviting them to praise any god, honor any ancestor or (in the Heathen way) make a boast. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, nibbling cheese and cucumber sandwiches while communing with nature’s own gods.

The blot, a more formal ritual affair I think most pagans would recognize, had none of the above. The very sincere young man who led it proceeded with all the high church pomp he could master. Our space was warded and hallowed at some length, and then opened with a very long praise poem of Odin. OK, so far. Odin is my man, if I am not yet his, the father of poetry and wisdom, but I was really there for Bragi.

There was a guided meditation but at that point I was fighting with my technology to get my Bluetooth headphones to work because I heard my partner and sister coming to the dining room table. Our apartment is like the sounding box of large instrument and my sister speaks with the authority of an 87-year old eldest sibling, which is to saw loudly. So I didn’t really manage to follow along the whole way although I was doing my best.

Perhaps it’s post-Covid Zoom fatigue but I was reminded of my mother carry the little red portable television into my sickroom so I could watch Mass. That never replicated the real thing for me without being present for the familiar ritual. The only televisied religious event that had any affect on me was watching The Robe at I think nine or ten year of age with 104+ hallucinatory fever. When I was better I started going to 6:30 am mass every morning for a week or so, while my mother said rosaries in hopes I would prove a priest. Nope

The only thing which resonated with me (pun intended) was the incantation of the Galdr runes. I found that to be satisfying solemn. And We all shared poems and offerings. I shared a praise poem and told of my recovery from bipolar and the medication that had blocked writing for seven years, thanked Odin and Bragi for the return of poetry. There was a long, involved and entirely sincere closing.

All of this is attested to in the authorities which I dutifully read ten years ago, but I often skimmed through the scripted rituals and guided meditations. I find Gundarson’s* meditations on the runes instructive in Teutonic Magic. The rest seemed artificial and forced to me, something theosophic and Wiccan and that’s just not my bag. I would imagine Years and his fellow travelers sitting through something like this instead of a seance

Perhaps it’s my deep knowledge of, and equally deep rejection of, the Roman Catholic Church. I was raised in that church, and attended 12 years of parochial school mostly under the Christian Brothers de la Salle. I made my First Communion in Latin with my little red and black type missal fr responses. I was steeped in ceremony and when trapped into Mass still miss the chiming bells of consecration, understood the miraculous transubstantiation and thought as a child if I peeked in mischief at the ciborium inside the tabernacle I would be blinded by an incredible light.

I think the reason I am still solitary, with one charming heathen friend who reads my runes, is that my experience of the Catholic Church and the Young Socialist Alliance/Socialist Workers Party have built a powerful defense against that sort of overweening earnestness and catechism. I don’t reject bell, book and candle entirely; it just doesn’t resonate with me. My idea of pagan ritual arises in part out of stanza seven of Wallace Steven’s “Sunday Morning.” I was once as sincere as our erstwhile full-bearded goði with an appropriate nom de rune–Marcus Trúasóngr–but I grew out of that. I’m afraid if I attended a pagan con I would shortly thereafter move to Iceland, build myself a beehive hut, and commune with the Landvættir while building álfhól.

That is why I’m still solitary and spelled the title with a lowercase h. I have my own devotions. When I was driving Uber/Lyft for a living, I always started my shift with an invocation of Njord to protect my voyages of commerce with a Laguz pendent hung from my rearview mirror. I speak with the Landvættir of the stand of ancient oaks along the remains of one of the last of the city’s defining bayou. In the roots of one oak I can still find  Hildisvín even through the peak Pareidolia of my most manic is gone. I study the birds there and look in particular for the anhinga in one spot, drying his magnificent wings. The crows call as I walk in familiar ways. I am writing a set of modern Rune poems I’m quite proud of and my one Heathen friend here thinks are promising. I rather like the Scandinavian tunic and rune-marked sporran I will rock come Mardi Gras and the next time Heilung comes to town. (Floppy black hat and black eye parth still under considerations)

When I approach my (sometimes dusty and unclothed) altar/shelf my Mjolnir is all the warding and hallowing I need, so long as I approach with a quiet and intent mind. Candles yes, sometime, when my purpose is beyond my own inner dialogue with the divine and seek intervention for another, or on a high holiday. Incense can be nice, again on holidays. My statuettes of Odin and Thor, modeled on archeological finds, await there along with amber, crow feathers, a small black Onyx corvid beside them (really must get a second, although it equally represents the Crow Cousins I feed daily), the first bind rune I carved and blooded for the healing of another, an offering bowl and my short horn. Wednesday I am as a punctual as a broken Gemini can be for time with Odin, and I routinely ask and offer Thor Viki and speak with Bragi. He hasn’t answered yet, but I hope someday he will.

* Yes, I know. Handled with care.