Working For A Better Life (valkyrieofodin) wrote in northern_trad, @ 2008-05-21 09:06:00 |
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Current mood: | contemplative |
The Beings I Honor & Why
A lot of people are on the bandwagon that everyone must be a deity to deserve honor. And I understand that. It makes a lot of sense that if you are going to give a being a lot of your time and effort you want to dedicate it to a deity. But I'm not not one of those people. I honor my ancestors, the Disir and the Alfar, I honor those who I consider heroes and I honor the Wights of the Land and other areas as well. I honor the Gods/Goddesses of course, but that's a given, and I honor the Jotunar and the alvs. This is no particular order of how I do it either.
Why do I make distinctions? Isn't that prejudicial? Well no, I don't think it is. Actually I think allowing beings to be treated as individuals gives them more honor. When I honor the Jotunar or the Alvs, I am honoring them for their very essence, their nature and where they weave themselves into the order of the world. I am giving them a special standing in my world. When I honor the Alfar and the Disir(my ancestors)I am showing that the place I stand in now is rooted in the past, projecting itself forward for the next generation. And I am doing something that is special. When I honor my personal Heroes(or Heroines if you make gender distinctions)I am showing that some qualities are worthy of note to me in particular, I am attempting to reach for something that either I want to embody and see as reachable or something I see as an ideal that everyone should embrace. When I honor the Gods/Goddesses I am giving them their place in my world as well. And for me, this is as it should be. The process of blotting, is not simply to ask for something, but for me to make these connections. And it improves where I am standing. It gives me a sense of what I should be doing. I do blot daily. Usually that means that I blot a Deity of the Day and have a round for Heroes&Ancestors as well as an open round(or more)depending on my needs and what needs expressed from within myself. This gives me room to see what is happening in my world and how to make it better. I don't have to do it I do it because I want to. I also try and blot the Jotunar at least monthly because I reserve a particular day for them. And I give my Disir honor on Fridays. I light incense for the House Wights and the Alfar daily(unless I am low on incense they are somewhat understanding as to my financial straits). This makes my world have a kind of holistic form to it. I know it sounds more complex than it actually is in practice. In practice, it takes but a few moments to light incense for the Alfar and the Alvs. It takes about fifteen minutes to a half hour a day to honor the Deity of the Day and my ancestors/heroes as well as work through my day in a somewhat ritualized manner that allows for recapitulation in a rather direct way. (it helps to do this for me if it is daily but it doesn't have to be this way for everyone) The honor I give my Disir always is in accompaniment to the time I spend with Frigga and Freyja it is especially appropriate to me. My monthly meeting with the Jotunar takes longer because it is once monthly but it gives me a sense of freedom and is uplifting to me... Each portion of my self is addressed and finds ways of expression. If I wrote every entity off as unilaterally being a Deity this would not be so. I believe these are the reasons that tribal societies honor different beings, because to be part of a tribal society you needed to make yourself fit within a certain societal mold, work for the betterment of the community as it were. And yet, each individual had to retain their core individuality. It was not something to be brushed under the rug. There was no organized religion telling the folk within that they could not do a thing if it worked, simply that in the group they would not do so because it would not be productive. And thus family traditions were born. As I stated earlier, I have been doing artwork that I feel expresses the Deities and the Jotunar in very personal ways. I may even eventually be able to expand that to the alvs both light and swart. But I don't know. I haven't been driven in that direction. I am going to be posting several of the pictures here behind cuts after this entry, I thought that I should probably post my take on how I approach my spiritual practice a bit more openly first,however,simply because it has been rather quiet of late and if I am going to put up my art I don't want folks to think I am spamming the community. I hope this has been helpful in some vein.