How I Heathen: The Basics

The Daily Routine-ish

So…what does a modern heathen do, exactly? So glad you asked. This is me, not looking like an absolute heathen, except for my Mjolnir…a symbol of my faith that only gets removed for cleaning it.

I wake up around 6 am most days. Most. Today I slept in because although I yearn for spring, spring brings allergies. Allergies bring feeling like absolute garbage for a couple of weeks while I get acclimated to the green things sprouting. It means I take the non-drowsy allergy meds which, somehow, always make me drowsy anyway.

I shuffle my way downstairs, assessing if my joints are going to betray me today or if they are going to work in my favor. I greet the doggos, always enthusiastic first thing in the morning and play “dodge the tail of doom” that is on the hind end of the Great Dane who, at four years old, thinks she is still a puppy. Butt scratches and loves for the beasts so they will let me continue my journey to awake-ness.

I make it through the gauntlet of relentless dog love to my Keurig…the beast that feeds my need for almost instant gratification of the hot bean juice that warms my soul.

Then I pad, usually barefoot, out to the front porch - my perch - to greet the sunrise and to set my intentions for the day. Sometimes I will meander to the lawn and touch grass when it is warm. While I am out there, sometimes I write, letting the stories take me where they will. This is also the time IT begins. IT is the start of the daily exchanges between me and my cosmic twin - my mirror, my sometimes muse. We often have conversations without actually words. Words are not needed for us. We can communicate with a well timed selfie or an emoji. 💜 is our favorite.

I briefly consider how I would explain all that in a post. How does one explain the impossible? Yet I look to the tattoo on my left inner wrist and am reminded that magic is real. Our connection is real. We do the “impossible” every day as if it is as easy as breathing. It simply is a thing. Maybe one day in the future I will be able to relate that story but not today.

Then I begin my day in earnest.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are for these writings. Tuesday and Thursday and sometimes the weekend are for the novel. So I go to the sanctuary that is my bedroom, light the incense of the day and begin, hoping for not too many interruptions.

After a writing season, I will have some quiet time, altar time with my gods. There is one in particular that is always at the forefront lately, weaving stories that entertain me. He has been *extra* lately so I either veil to keep him from disrupting my entire day, or I live dangerously and ride the waves of absolute nonsense he sends my way. Today is a veil day. The signs and “coincidences” have been coming fast and furious. I decide I do not need to be reminded today. I know. Boy, do I know. The veil is a temporary reprieve and sooner or later he will find a way around even this but for now he is respecting the boundary.

Then I will have a light lunch before embarking upon the fiber portion of the day. I currently have five projects in progress. I choose which one wants to make me curse the least and, hooks or needles in hand, I start the magic of turning threads into art. It is a sort of magic, in line with the ancestors and the sacred duties of a Völva. To be able to weave the threads requires an ability to read them, to nudge them into alignment, to see where there might be future knots that need undoing before they become an issue.

So I sip tea, I follow the threads and I create.

Then mundane things made holy by the simple act of mindfulness. Cleaning? A cleansing of sacred spaces. My room becomes less of just a space and more of a holy space where magic happens. The dishes become plates of offering, my cups are goblets of the divine. I remind myself that it is a privilege to be able to clean. It is an honor to be the caretaker of this house. It makes cleaning an act of sacrament instead of a task I dread.

Supper is a communion with the family that, for the most part, have accepted that I disappear into my room for extended hours. It isn’t because I don’t want to spend time with them. It is, quite simply, just the way things are right now while in the midst of noveling. The novel…my gods she is glorious thus far and the characters are staying on script. I’m suspicious that they are secretly plotting against me.

After supper, I try to get in some light exercise - usually an elliptical and then a shower, another sacred cleansing filled with carefully curated scents and music to lull the senses into a state of relaxation.

Then I will retreat to my sanctuary and spend another bit of time communing with whoever wants to commune. This is when it gets decided whether or not I trance that night. Do the gods require my attendance for some learning? Are the ancestors requesting an audience? Is there a soul out there in our mundane world tangled in the web? Is it well past time for my twin and I to mix our energies? Is little Timmy in the well again?

Yeah, it’s like that.

Lately it’s been a certain god, and me helping a soul who doesn’t know what the hell is going on or how he ended up tangled in my brain space. I reassure him that I don’t know either but I have my suspicions. Side-eye the god in question. Laughter. So much laughter.

Sometimes trance will eventually lead to sleep. When sleep takes me before awakening, I dream walk - adventures beyond the veil. Last night there was a parade of penguins with tiny little rune covered capes and a god that had no name. I’m not sure what to make of that but he seemed friendly enough. He didn’t spout off riddles or profound reality shattering prophesies. I think he was just happy that somebody saw him and acknowledged his existence.

Other times I come out of trance feeling like I have touched the beyond and it has changed me somehow.

And I have changed.

I have learned to accept “the things” as real. I have learned not to question. I have been shown how the Wyrd is a living, breathing thing…how it is not static and the threads can be nudged into alignment before they are woven. I have traveled to places I cannot even explain in words. I have played in liminal spaces - the spaces between where neither realm nor mundane are present yet everything is present. I have accepted that quantum consciousness is more than a theory to me. It is my reality.

Every day that passes I become more: more self aware, and more connected with every soul in my matrix, and as a result, more connected with everything that exists, on this side of the veil and beyond.

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Thank you, as always for taking the time to read my writing. It means a lot to me to know I’m not shouting into the void 💜