Disablot/Charming of the Plow/Imbolc

The eve of Imbolc fell on a Friday, and it just felt more than appropriate to hold our Disablot on that night. It was on the night of the February Full Moon when Frigg made herself fully known to me. I wanted to honor both her and this time of knowing.

I gathered table supplies- Frigg totem, seeds to bless, horn of juice, silk flowers to place next to the snowflake candle holders to highlight the juxtaposition of this time.

First, we did our table blessing. Then, we each lifted the horn and completed the Disablot by giving honor to our female ancestors. At each of the kids turns, they honored their chosen gods. Witchlette made offerings to Skadi and Idunn as well as all the Fae and all the “lady gods” while Witchling made a boast to Ullr and Odin.

We enjoyed our meal together and were winding down when I started the Charming of the Plow portion. We talked about the plant life cycle and the seasonal life cycle; we talked about how we would plant some veggies at our new house. We each made offerings in honor of the new growing season, that we would find success.

Lastly, I made an open offering to Frigg by pouring some juice from the horn into the offering bowl. I then led the kids in a round I adapted from Nordic Wiccan. Since I made each line double, it became a call back that I led the the Littles responded: (to the tune of Are You Sleeping)

Spring is coming

Spring is coming

Full of flowers

Full of flowers

Idunn and her apples

Idunn and her apples

All is young

All is young

Corn will be golden

Corn will be golden

Hair of Sif

Hair of Sif

Thor is making thunder

Thor is making thunder

Rain pours down

Rain pours down

Fruits and bounty

Fruits and bounty

Gifts from Jord

Gifts from Jord

Frigg’s hearth and fire

Frigg’s hearth and fire

Safe and warm

Safe and warm

Wintertide

Wintertide

Skadi skis

Skadi skis

Ullr goes hunting

Ullr goes hunting

Ravens cry

Ravens cry

After bedtime, I returned alone to the dinner table altar and made an offering of milk to Frigg.

This morning, I took the offering bowl, and some seeds, and went out to the front garden to finish the Charming of the Plow aspect of the ritual.

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Sunset meditation or A lesson on UPG

Every night, both kiddos request and receive a meditation before bed. Witchling has been on a Rainbow Meditation kick. We do a chakra meditation, teaching what each energy port controls, and how it works. I’ve woven an advancement to SPP to further go into where babies come from as well as solidified honesty and integrity in words. Witchlette has been exploring “trips”, meditative visualizations of different places. We’ve done the cliffs of Ireland as I imagine our ancestors may have seen them. We’ve done waterfalls, beaches, woods, gardens, fairy gardens, and outer space. Usually I add a pause for Elemental acknowledgement within the meditations: the sun, ocean, sand, and breeze while at the beach, for example.

She started a new trend last night: I want to see Skadi.

I led her on a meditation through a field that ended where the trees started, as she began an ascent up a wooded mountain. About 3/4 of the way up the mountain, the trees thinned as she came closer to the snow-topped peak. She got to Skadi’s hall, and found the door easy to open as she was welcomed in. And I stopped.

Tonight, she asked to go to Skadi again, but this time to actually see her. I explained UPG, and how I see the gods and how she sees the gods are different, and that’s not only ok, but good. We each have our own experience and it’s not my place to influence her experience with her deities. She needs to work with them in her own way as she sees them. She understood the “no,” but didn’t really understand the “why”. She decided she wanted to see Frigg, since I could take her all the way to Frigg.

Hubby jumped in and asked what color and length she sees Skadi’s hair. She answered white and long. Hubby asked me the same thing, and I responded gray and long- not old gray, but winter sky gray. Hubby then said, see- you even see her hair as different so you have to see her yourself. Having this concrete example (thanks Hubby!) Witchlette was ready to do a meditation with limited details of the deity she wanted to see.

But she kept her switch from Skadi to Frigg, now adding not to show Frigg to her as she sees her as a white puffy cloud.

I explained to Witchlette that Frigg, based on the Lore, lives at the beach near marshes. That’s not UPG, that’s what the ancestors left us. I asked Hubby what the land next to a marsh was called and Witchlette coined “larsh”- land marsh.

Here’s her meditation:

You are walking on a path of larsh. To your left, there are tall grasses, with many cattails. Behind them, you have a thick forest. To your right, a marsh with lots of lily pads, and a water lily adorning each lily pad. There is a crane in the water. He sees you, and you stop walking. He watches you for a moment, understands you are not a threat, and continues fishing. You continue to walking down your larsh path until you come to a small, sandy, rocky beach. A small runoff from the marsh babbles over rocks and towards the cattails and grasses, like a tiny waterfall.

You sit down and enjoy the sunset. You notice the sundisk in the sky and the one reflected in the water. You see white, wispy clouds about the sky, some of them over the sun, draped like a fine necklace. These clouds interrupt the perfect circle of the sundisk reflection. The sun comes closer to the horizon, to the line where the sky meets the sea.

The sun sets closer and closer, until finally the sundisk in the sky touches the sundisk in the water. There, where the two disks meet, you see a figure. A soft breeze blows. You hear the grasses and cattails click together behind you. The clouds move along in the breeze, around the figure. The sun sets further, until the sky and reflection sundisks are almost gone. Slowly, starts are visible. One here, then one there. The further the sun sets, the more stars are visible. The figure has gone, the sun has completely gone beyond the horizon, and the night sky grows darker and darker and starlight takes over.

Ancestral View?

My daily prayers to Frigg involve mostly kennings. They are less prayers to her, asking her for something, and more meditations focusing on her energies. The ultimate goal, for me, is to be the best mother and wife I can be, and feeling her walking with me on my path of being my best me and honoring the local spirits and my ancestral spirits along the way.

Some of the kennings:

Spinner of the Clouds

Keeper of the Stars

Singer of the Web

Weaver of the Way

Mother of the Light

Bride of the Wind

Keeper of the Keys

Friend of Mothers

Protector of Children

Defender of Families

Lady of the Sun

Friend of Families

Matron of Marriage

Looking at and unpacking each one, starting with the most obvious.

• Keeper of the Keys

As the Queen of the Aesir, Frigg keeps keys to each of the halls, just as the lady of the house would keep the keys for each of her places. The number of keys were a power and status symbol.

• Friend of Mothers, Matron of Marriage, Defender of Families

Despite nearly every other goddess having children, Frigg is the only one known for motherhood specifically. Nana has Forsetti, Sif has at least Ullr and Thrud…but none of them are motherhood personified. She is also, despite others being married, the only goddess known for marriage. Others have love, romance, and sex…but Frigg is specifically marriage. By having both in her wheelhouse, she becomes the defender of families.

• Spinner of the cloud, singer of the web, weaver of the way.

Frigg is most known for spinning, both clouds in the sky, especially the light wispy ones, as well as spinning fates. It is with cruel irony that she knows the fates of all, including her Balder yet remains silent. I often ponder if she knew all of the details…that there was nothing she could actually do to prevent it, but she could also do nothing at all, so she  does what she can, knowing it will be fruitless and remaining silent.

• Protector of Children

The two above pieces weave together to make Frigg the protector of children. Not only does she walk with mothers, but she watches over children. Her role increases to protector, as one can imagine after going through a traumatic experience, it becomes a person’s beacon. The most vocal proponents for a movement have often gone through it themselves- MADD, Everytown, etc.

• Lady of the Sun, Mother of the Light, Bride of the Wind, (Keeper of the Stars)

Here is where the ancestors part comes in.

We’re going to go back eons, to the earliest Germanic peoples first putting together language and attempting to make sense of the world around them.

This yellow disc is here. We can see. We have more warmth. The yellow disc is in the sky. Sometimes the yellow disc is surrounded by clouds. Sometimes it is covered with clouds. The yellow disc is there and warm. The yellow disc goes away, and tiny white dots appear. We can’t see. The yellow disc comes back, and we can see again. We can see because of light.

I’ve written before about Frigg being a Sun Goddess. She is the Sun, and she gives birth to the Light. She resides in the Sky, which is one with the Wind. She dictates when then stars may be out, as their keeper.

 

 

Isolated and alone

Consistency is the key to life.

No matter how hectic something may be, do it often enough and it becomes routine. Do it dedicatedly enough, and it becomes ritual.

This is how I feel about my early morning dog walk.

Part of me feels sheer insanity. Especially on mornings like the last two.

While I clearly can hear highway traffic on 55 and 64 (which I can only hear at this hour), I am alone. No other houses are awake. No cars are driving past.

Most mornings, there are some early morning warriors we will pass by, almost all of them women who steal away to this one moment. I like to take comfort in their comradery, despite the fact that I don’t know their names.

On mornings like this week, however, there was no one. It was too wet, too soggy. It wasn’t currently raining, but it was damp enough to be a deterrent.

Some dry mornings, I don’t see another early morning warrior either, but I don’t feel as alone as I did this week.

No stars are visible, so I am unable to see and connect with Orion, with whom I converse every morning. No planets are visible. The Moon, sometimes cloaked, but often obscured.

My first Frigg-specific morning prayer, after Brunhilde’s prayer, begins, “Weaver of the clouds, Keeper of the stars…”

It’s amazing what cloud cover over the early morning sky will do.

What they want, a rambling reprise

Yesterday, Hubby and I found the perfect shelf to finish off my altar space. This leave a place for tools to remain easily accessible, versus in a drawer behind the space where I keep loose herbs and extra candles.

With Odin, Eir, and Heimdall moving to their new places, only Loki, Ullr, and Tyr remained. Tyr wanted to be close to the dogs, but didn’t specify where. The dogs are wherever we are, typically. But I needed Loki to stay with Tyr to keep him in check. Ullr wanted his own space too, but he wasn’t coming in clearly. Everything was muddled and fuddled.

Things were better since the beautiful ritual R shared at CotE that morning. Healing and cathertic. Big changes are coming with kindergarten and I feel like I’m making everything balance on my shoulders. My work schedule releases earlier. We have two awesome grandma’s ready and waiting in the wings. Hubby has said, in a deer-in-headlights what if we (read: I) can’t do it all, that he is prepared to make time with work stuff too and that we (read: we) can do it all. Saying this aloud in a safe space, my need to do everything and not lose myself [again], with the purpose of cleansing right along with the rest of my community, many of whom shared their own personal growth works and commitments they need to uphold, lifted a nervous knot in my stomach that planted itself last Monday. By giving the knot words, I took away it’s power over myself because now I have a focus- to not lose myself. (hold that thought)

But still, muddled and fuddled.

Looking at the altar, I realized I was tiptoeing around Loki. I had an idea and got some supplies together. As Hubby saw me carefully wrapping Loki in cotton and placing him in a box, he joked and said if only we had a snake to hang above him. I giggled, but it was brilliant. I drew a snake on the box and the crazy energy I’ve been feeling the last few weeks disappated.

There’s too much retrograde right now to invite chaos. I don’t hate chaos in fact, I usually function in controlled chaos. But right now, I needed to bind that shit, at least for the moment.

With Loki dealt with, I brought Tyr downstairs and set him up with Eir. They both like their new place.

I put Ullr down in the living room and, as Hubby and I spent time together, Ullr came in loud and clear: he wants to live in Witchling’s room. Hubby chuckled at the appropriateness of the move.

This morning, after he awoke, I went into Witchling’s room and placed Ullr there.

Now, there are two. And the lovely tapestry I created. And the awesome shelf Hubby found and hung.

(Resume thought from above)

I’ve been riding the struggle bus for the three weeks that I said I would awake early to go through my morning routine, work or no work. And I didn’t pick up an evening routine because watching TV and trolling the internet just felt more rewarding in the moment. Perhaps it was too cluttered. Likely also my focus was too pessimistic to be motivated. Struggle bus never made it to the station this morning and I rode the 5:35 motivation bus instead. I walked the dogs, did my morning prayers to Frigg, and then Witchlette bounded into the room just in time to start yoga. She got her yoga mat and we had a great session this morning.

What they want, they get

Confession time:

Our front room, second living space, dubbed “the library” because that was my childhood goal…

Our front room is the last room with boxes, and much of the boxes are stuff that needs to make it’s way to the crafting space upstairs, which is also a chaotic moving clusterfuck.

I lost my patience for getting to the library eventually and cleared the space out myself Friday.

Ahh…much better!

Ok, background for the next part…

A few times, I have put some of my alter totems into a cabinet as things were being cleaned, or as certain rituals were being conducted and during which the presence of other deities would have been distracting both visually and spiritually. There was a point when Tyr, Odin, Loki, and Heimdall were in the cabinet for two weeks. They were not happy. Odin was pissed. When I did the Full 13 moon, everyone but Frigg was cabinetted. Frigg has never been cabinetted.

Last week, two more pieces have arrived, in the form of Ullr and Eir.

(Some people collect mugs, I collect gods 🤷😊)

The altar is getting crowded. I have shelves which will [eventually] be hung and some of the totems will move there.

During meditation yesterday, Odin made it clear he does not want to be in my bedroom. He wants to live in the library.

Heimdall wants to be on the front table, by the door.

Eir wants to be able to see the kitchen. Respectfully, she doesn’t want to be in the kitchen, likely because that is already space dedicated to Frigg, but she wants to be close.

Tyr wants to be close to the dogs, and it feels weird moving him away from Loki. Like, he keeps Loki in check. Loki doesn’t want to be on my altar, but also hasn’t specified a space where he will land. I like him sandwiched between Thor and Tyr where he is presently.

Hubby has been on board with everything else so far, why not to having Gods move in around the house. He took to them having new homes around the house really well.

Frigg’s dag dreizehn ritual

Last night, after bed time and walking the dogs, and after having completed my nightly upkeep chores during afternoon playtime, I was able to dedicate a nice chunk of time to Frigg and the Asynjur.
Last December, I compiled pieces of prayers from Northern Paganism and Odin’s Gift and put together a Full Moon ritual for R and I to share, honoring Frigg and our growing connection to her.
This evening, I recreated the moon ritual to honor Frigg and the Asynjur on this Friday the 13th (Frigg’s dag dreizehn).
I rearranged my altar. The five candle set-up I designated for two fires on the left and two ices on the right.

Fire. Heat from the south. (Light outermost left)
Ice. Cold from the north. (Light outermost right)
Fire. Heat from the south. (Light inner left)
Ice. Cold from the north. (Light inner right)
Fire melts the ice. The water mixes with the heat to make steam. The ice cools the steam to make mist. The mist fills the gap between fire and ice, where there was nothing. Mist of the world from where all life springs. (Light center)
I am shrouded now in the mist, no longer in this world yet not wholly in the otherworld. We walk the space between, in the mist, blessed by fire and ice.

(Light solo candle)
Hail, Frigg, wife of Odin, queen of the Aesir and Allfather’s one true equal.
Hail, Beloved, keeper of women, wives, and mothers.
Hail Allmother, watcher of all children, Aesir, Vanir, and human, looking after each as if they were her own.
Hail silent one, all knowing Weaver of Fates, yet bearing the knowledge alone.
You, who keep the keys for all the halls in Asgard.
You, Weaver of the clouds drifting from the Eastern sky.
I invite you here, now, Beloved Frigg Allmother hail and welcome.
Frigg, Beloved, Asgard’s Queen surrounded by twelve great goddesses to make thirteen.
(Light each tea light with each line)
Saga, ancient story-teller supreme
Eir, physician, healing maid
Gefion, giver, a land did make
Fulla, plenty all around
Sjofn, affection does abound
Lofn, permission granted thus
Sin, defender, warding us
Hlin, protectress, warrior friend
Var, hearing oaths until the end
Vor, does know all that we seek
Snotra, wise of what to speak
Gna, swift messenger of Frigg
Goddesses, much do you give.
Hail to you all, may you ever be strong,
May your days be joyful and your nights full of song.
May you grant us and ours love, peace and health,
Wisdom, kindness, good-luck and good wealth.
May it be that you are with us
Through our days and our nights,
To grant us comfort and strength
Through the dark and the light.
Hail to you Goddesses for your blessings this day,
Hail to you Goddesses for the blessings on their way.
Lady of Asgard,
You who hears the secrets of the All-Father,
You who holds his heart in your hands,
In you we seek what we need,
And you provide, greatly,
Let us remember your gifts,
And honor you with well wrought work,
From our hands and our hearts,
May we aid each other in times of need,
Through you, Frigg we can learn much,
And in you are mysteries that we seek to understand,
Wind us in your distaff, dole us fair and just fate,
Through you, Frigg we ask, that this life,
Be full of love, light, and needed strength,
Great Mother, accept my offering,
Not of blood, but of efforts and devotion,
My love and desire to honor you
(Pour wine into offering bowl)
Hail Frigga!

(Quiet meditation, then extinguish the tea lights)
Thank you, Asynjur, for all you bring.
Frigg Allmother, beloved by those who adore you.
Your tame spirit is the counter to the wild of Odin, keeping him balanced and ever returning to the homestead.
Keeper of the hearth and home.
Keeper of married lovers and loving parents.
Thank you for blessing your dottir this night.
May I dutifully complete joyful woman’s work in your honor.
Skal
(Extinguish Frigg candle)
As the mist condenses, we see the land from flesh, the mountains from bone, the rivers from blood, and the stones from teeth. As the mist recedes, we are harkened back to the garden in the middle of Yggdrasil. When the mist evaporates, we are once again fully in our world and no longer between worlds.
(Extinguish center candle)
The fire returns to Muspelheim (Extinguish inner left candle)
The ice returns to Niflheim (Extinguish inner right candle)
The fire returns to Muspelheim (Extinguish outer left candle)
The ice returns to Niflheim (Extinguish outer right candle)