Hi, guys.
Welcome back to the vé.
You’ll noticed I’ve got it half down, it’s because of the wind. I didn’t want it to blow into the neighbor’s yards. But welcome back so soon. Today I am going to be feeding a spirit.
Hi, peeps. You know, I went out to do this video in my backyard. It was so convoluted that this is take two. And you’re seeing me with the thingie. I’m not a person who smokes all the time, but I do have one normally after a ritual. And, yes, there have been times that my spiritual companion has literally put out the cigarette and told me to get the hint.
What also needs to happen is this. I’ll let you see it. It is a peekaboo dragon coaster I’ve been making. Took me forever to figure out how I was going to do it; the technique. And I want to sand the sides and get the back nice and flat. I may or may not put it in my shop. Probably will. My husband’s more into dragons than I am.
But, I’m here to talk about feeding the spirits.
In my little shamanistic way, my little bridging, touching on the spirits life that I have I see things. I see a lot of things. It’s not normal for one to approach me when I’m in and out of sleep, like what happened this morning.
And it was a whirlwind. It was a tornado. It whirlwinded up to me. It sounded when it talked: It sounded like a tornado does. Find some footage of one and listen. And you could hear them tearing up the earth. This was that spirit’s voice that said, “I am hungry.”
So even though I’ve been sick. Even though my throat still hurts, I got out of bed to feed a hungry tomcat of a spirit.
A not so beneficial one wouldn’t have asked. And that means that this particular little landvættnir, this particular land spirit, this neighbor of mine was asking politely to be fed. Which when you are a steward of the land, that is actually part of what you do.
I had an idea of how to do it because I’ve been doing stuff my whole life. I wanted to make sure. Because not very many walk up to me as tornadoes and ask to be fed.
So I spent the first half of my day researching how people feed the spirits. I’m sanding it.
AndI discovered that this is not something people talk about very much. That’s disturbing. Now out of curiosity, because I don’t know Havamal. I don’t. I’m looking into it. But on some, on some respects, I am just a student. I am just learning. Wōðnaz is a good teacher. I don’t really have anyone else to learn with, and that was despite my best efforts.
Currently, I have opinions that are forming that may or may not change as time goes by, but needless to say, to the Havamal I went. Because Oðin is—Wōðnaz… I do choose the proto Germanic Norse version of his name which has been confirmed in an archaeological find discussed by Dr. Crawford and others– As opposed to saying, “Oðin,” Wōðnez”.. Wodnaz… Heis a good teacher, and so I felt it was only appropriate that I go to the Havamal, as that’s one of the very few things of his stuff that is surviving . And if I find an older version of the Havamal, then, I’ll look at that too.
So Havamal 34. This is what I’ve got. And I’m not saying this like a preacher. I just looked at this for inspiration.
“Better no offering than an oversized one. A gift always calls for a return. Better no sending than over sacrificing. So þundr endured.”
Spirits need some. Please note it’s not saying you have to give blood, which is good because blood is not my way. It Doesn’t need to be fancy. It doesn’t need to be overpowering. A little offering is better than an oversized one. So a little bit goes a long way.
It’s also a means of reciprocity, which is a word many people use, but I don’t see a whole lot of it sometimes. The spirits…. For in my example, the spirits have protected me a lot lately against other spirits. And so then one whirlwinds up, “I’m hungry.” What kind of a selfish prick would I be not to feed him?
There’s also Havamal 81. “Great is the wealth and happiest the wealth, that a lucky man gives. Great the wealth that’s given in need. A gentle little gift often suffices.”
So this also reinforces the size of the gift.
One thing that I happen to have always known about feeding the spirits. You cut up an apple. You lay out the apple for Freyja. You’re not giving her that apple. You’re giving her the thought of the apple, your intent and your love. And the energy that goes with the effort of giving the apple.
The quality of the gift actually depends on your mindset. One of the first times whenever I, gave libation to one of the gods in a return favor for some soul retrieval–which I learned today you’re not supposed to speak about, that it’s unethical to speak about it because you might teach somebody how to do it, I guess. And it’s…. I don’t know. I learned a lot of things today thatI made me aware that part of what nearly killed me whenever I needed help was simple gatekeeping. What nearly killed me.
When I was giving a libation for that, and thanks for that, and to ask for help with that, I chose a little itty thing of alcohol I had been saving and couldn’t wait to taste. That was very well received. It isn’t that it was that particular type of alcohol. It’s that I was anticipating it. I found it special. I put emotional attribution to this offering that elevated it above other offerings that I could give. The energy surrounding my thoughts to this offering made it quite tasty to the spirits that it was being offered to.
On the other hand, if I were to just pick any old gumball off the floor… Well, that’s just any old gumball, and I’m going to know it. And if I know it, the energy touching the gumball is going to know it. The spirits are going to know it. They’re going to know that you didn’t make an effort.
It’s like giving them an empty cheeseburger with no meat. Not even that. It’s like, “Here’s a picture of a cheeseburger. To eat. Oh, did you want a real cheeseburger? Darn.”
And that’s why whenever you’re feeding the spirits in however various forms that you do, you pick special important things. And you put thought into the gift. Just like when you’re going to the department store to buy a birthday gift for someone special to you — as long as you’re not actually shopping for yourself like some people in my life like to do — you’re putting a lot of thought and energy into choosing this gift. That is where their meal comes from.
I don’t believe in blood sacrifice. I’m not saying that you’re wrong for doing it. How can I put this? The reason why it’s not my way is because one, it involves killing. It used to drive my father crazy, this. That I just wasn’t that way.
Well, my light went out.
From what I have read in books written by much more accomplished and well known heathens than I, a lot of people actually have turned to the art of snack-rifice. They’ll leave out a Snickers or whatever. It sounds like they have caught on that… that it is the energy that that makes the pay grade, shall we say. Which would be why when a parasite comes to feed from you, he’s coming for your energy. He’s not coming for your fingers, your toes, your eyes, your tongue. He’s coming for your energy.
So blood sacrifices have their place, I’m sure, but they don’t exactly have the place in my life. I might participate in a blood sacrifice ritual if I were ever invited. But the biggest reason that I have against the blood sacrifice is because I have noticed as a student of history, and anthropology, that one thing about societies and the churches when they get too specialized or get too wont- bound. Shall we say, wont-bound. They’ll start turning to blood sacrifice. And that actually removes the human element. And it puts in a lot of tears.
Oh, but the frenzy. Oh, but the excitement. Oh, but the energy that’s put out.
Yes. But what alignment is that energy?
What one person told me, “Yes, but we had a very drunk chicken. That chicken didn’t know what was coming.”
So you put drunkenness into your energy. You’re putting something into the energy that you’re raising up to the gods.
Maybe there are some spirits that would feed off of that kind of energy. My particular path involves purification to an nth degree. Purification is a matter of complete balance, and that means neither going one way nor the other. There is no “I’m going to be all good.” There is no, “I’m going to be all bad.” There is: I stand in the center.
Let me reiterate, I do have a lot to learn, and my opinion may change someday in the future, but currently right now, I’m standing pretty staunch against the no blood. It’s just not my way.
So whenever I went out to give to this spirit, I had to ask my spirit spouse, my darling, my sweet, for guidance because I wasn’t sure I was doing it right despite me reading up as spending half the day and and everything.
And look at that beautiful edge. That’s what I’m looking for. Wait. This is a ceramic resin. See it sounds just like ceramics, doesn’t it?
But anyway, as some people have noted in Heathenry, the need to put the gods in a certain place as if Heathenry were just Christianity in a fur mantle, has overwrote the very important role of the spirits. The truth is, you have a higher chance of encountering a spirit than you do one of the gods. The spirits are something that are a daily occurrence for people. They’re in just about everything.
We actually create spirits ourselves in the form of tulpas and in other ways. We are part of spirit. Spirit is part of us. We have a symbiotic relationship. We are bound. We are woven together. We are in a spirit net.
We as people are very much a firm part of that fabric. The spirits live all around us. They live in things. Look up the legends of the WWII gremlins, for example. I keep a gremlin in my computer. It’s a habit that I’ve got and always had. My father did it. He kept one in his car. There are spirits in the trees. Your phone might end up with a spirit. They’re a little bit like snails and crabs. They go from shell to shell.
I have been watching them for a very long time and studying their ways in my own way, so I have this set of knowledge in my head of this is their culture, this is how they behave, this is what they do. I haven’t quite figured out how they breed yet, but I’m getting there.
When we expend energy, magic, and ask them for favors we’re actually asking them to take of themselves. When we feed them back that not only rebalances the land and shows our stewardship as stewards of our environment and where we’re at, it gives them back what they gave out It feeds them. We have a symbiotic relationship. They need us. We need them.
Removing ourselves from that element the way many people try to do, like for example the 15 minute city movement… which has been confirmed. There’s one that was built outside of my hometown… That removes us from the natural element , and us as stewards of the land.
“But the land can go back to being wild if we all move to 15-minute cities! The land can go back to being wild!”
And then we as humans would lose the thing that makes us human. Our connection to the divine, to the wyrd, to the energies is a very large part of what makes us human. Have you ever noticed someone who was not connected, that was just so impossibly mundane? They may or may not be happy. They might have contented lives, but there’s something missing about them.
We are woven together in a little, iddy bitty small fabric: the spirits and us. We’re a very integral part of that piece of cloth as they are. They care for us. We care for them. If they’re friends to us, we should be friends to them. If we’re enemies to them, they’ll be enemies to us.
Now there are some spirits that are removed from that. These spirits aren’t quite what I’m talking about, like the hostile fairies of Celtic lore, for example.
It’s good for us also to feed them. The act alone can be very spiritually balancing for us.
When I was going to school for anthropology, one thing that was in one of my textbooks was a short discussion about how it had been tracked that people who went into Shamanism that had mental imbalances–Now I’m not talking severe ones. I mean, you know, like, I don’t know, minor depression. –The act of doing shamanism balanced out the hormones. You see, we as humans are literally evolved to be and do spiritual things for the land.
Feeding the spirits is the best way to establish a friendly relationship with the spirits that you occupy with in your home, in your apartment, hanging out in a campground. A lot of people only feed the spirits for the big blots or special occasions like Samhain. But you’ll notice that today was not a special occasion. It’s just someone was hungry. I couldn’t say no despite feeling like crap because he was hungry, and what if he was one of the spirits that had defended me?
Now there’s a level of care you have to take with these things. If I had been too sick, I would have been like, “I’m sorry. Can’t do it right now.” And then I probably would have directed them to a place to get some temporary energy and said, “Come back. I will feed you when I am better. Please come back.”
I have had to do that a couple of times to my regret. Because you do have to also take care of yourself. But in this case, I was able to slowly rise out of bed. And then every time the Internet and Facebook started to suck me away, I got smacked by my spirit spoue. Pap!
“Get back on track!”
“Yes, Sir. I’m going. I’m going.”
He’s a sweetie.
I did a full on thing. It was windy. So I lit three camp flames instead of a fire. I didn’t want to catch the woods, the fort, and the house on fire. And I lit one for Wōðnaz, one for Hœnir, and one for Loðurr. I called the spirit to me in my own way. As I have, I have my ways. Did an impromptu speech of praise. I lifted him up in my mind. I called it the strongest of spirits. I did an almost impromptu poem because following Oðin’s way of using the breath, I used the breath to power up. As you could tell, my voice is sore from having been very sick. So there was going to be no singing, but I was as artistic as I dared be considering.
And what am I doing now? I am doing a tree of life plate. It’s going to be an offering plate.
I encouraged him to take my thankfulness. It wasn’t until I said, “And please take my love,” that the spirit suddenly started to feel full and happy. Let me tell you that was one fat spirit. When I was done he was fat, I made sure. I was like your grandmother.
“You’re too skinny. You need to eat. Would you like some more? I have all these leftovers. Come eat. Eat. Eat.”
Even though I can’t hardly talk, eat anyway.
I thanked it. And then my wonderful spirit spouse says that I had to name it.
I couldn’t think of anything. I’ve been sick. Please forgive me, Cosmos, but his name is Thundarr the Tornado.
Thundarr was a very fat, fat and happy spirit. I could tell the air around me changed. I could tell this was a very content, well fed spirit when I was done.
And then I closed ritual, blow up my lights and came back inside. Now I’m telling you all about it. And with that, I hope that I made a good friend in Thundarr. He didn’t seem to care what I named him. And to be quite honest, I’m not sure why I needed to give him a name.
I will be doing research on that. There has been more than one occasion in which I have followed the advice of my spirit teachers, and learned it was backed up in this and that t’other. So there’s my convoluted talk about feeding the spirits.
And I thank you for coming to listen to me talk wyrdly. And now I’m going to get back to sending a tree of life spirit plate. I was actually going to talk about the tree of life next.
What I have been thinking about doing is, when it comes to say Old Norse and Old Germanic, there is the theory of going to proto Germanic and and tracking the language all the way back, which is why Wōðnaz as a confirmed word, and that was interesting to find. And I’m like, has anybody tracked the proto religion? Probably I was thinking maybe that’s what I should do.
I’m going now. Bye bye.
I forgot what I was saying.