Prayer to Sif

There will always come storms; there will always come rain. But even in times when our best efforts seem in vain, You teach us how to survive and not let our hope be slain. You inspire us to cherish the bounties we've attained; You remind us to be grateful for the wisdom that we've gained. Even as biting frosts coat our once-golden plains, In the dead of winter, as winds howl and sunlight wanes, You help us withstand the cold, and we remain Until spring's budding dawn warms us once again, And we bathe in the summer sunlight, gold as grain.

[[original work]]

The most common mistake people make when thinking about prehistory and how to avoid it.

In "The Dawn of Everything, A New History for Humanity" David Graeber gives what I think might be the best piece of advice I've ever heard for understanding deep human history, and that is to get your mind out of the Garden of Eden.

People speculating about prehistory before modern archeology were quick to frame early humanity as existing in a "state of nature", either with pure innocent tribal communism, or being brutish barbarous cavemen, then something happened to bring us from the state of nature into "society". Did we make a Faustian bargain by domesticating plants and animals? Why is evidence of intergroup violence in prehistory so rare? How did we fall from the innocent state of nature? This, of course, smacks of the biblical creation story, so even if people don't believe it literally, they seem to have a hard time letting go of it spiritually even in a secular context.

This is pretty much nonsense, of course. Humans have existed for over 2 million years. Anatomically modern humans have existed for at least 300 thousand years. Behaviourally modern humans (with symbolism, art, long distance trade, political awareness) have existed for at least 50 thousand years, from our best evidence, but possibly a lot longer. The time between the Sumerians inventing writing and urban living 5,000 years ago and now is only a narrow slice of human history.

If we want to understand human history properly, we shouldn't understand people of the past as fundamentally different from us. They were intelligent, politically aware people doing their best in the world they found themselves in, just like we are today. We didn't fall from innocence with the development of behavioral modernity, religion, farming, war, money, capitalism, computers, or anything else. The world has changed a lot, but people have been experimenting with different ways to live for as long as there have been people, like this example I've posted before about disabled people's role in late pleistocene Eurasian society.

People have been the same as we are now for at least the last 50 thousand years. We have lived in countless different ways and will continue to experiment. There was no fall, and we don't live at the end of history.

ROADKILL / SHRINE

an homage to a dead deer i was driving past a few weeks ago and thoughts of becoming earth.

mixed media installation // ko-fi

Drowning Morana during the total solar eclipse. About two weeks later than usual, but it’s not exactly every day that you get a total eclipse, much less an early Spring one.

Photos were taken just prior to totality. The pic of totality is a blatant steal from a friend, my phone camera lens isn’t up to that!

I’ll have pics of her rebirth later today or tomorrow.

@msgraveyarddirt @labradorduck @slavicafire @zarya-zaryanitsa @slaviclore

Death

The Nine of Cups

Justice

The Nine of Swords

The King of Swords

The Hanged Man

The Hermit

The Six of Swords

The Eight of Cups

The Five of Cups

The Sun

The Three of Swords

‘The Ghetto Tarot’: Haitian artists transform classic tarot deck into stunning real life scenes:

Welcome to the Ghetto Tarot, a project from award-winning documentary photographer Alice Smeets and a group of Haitian artists known as Atis Rezistans. The idea was to take the classic Rider-Waite tarot deck of 78 cards and create a photographic version of each card using settings and objects in the vibrant ghetto of Haiti.

As Smeets says, “The spirit of the Ghetto Tarot project is the inspiration to turn negative into positive while playing. The group of artists ‘Atiz Rezistans’ use trash to create art with their own visions that are a reflection of the beauty they see hidden within the waste. They are claiming the word ‘Ghetto,’ thus freeing themselves of its depreciating undertone and turning it into something beautiful.”

Tried something new this weekend

Bovidae (Antelopes, Cattle, and Goat-Antelopes)

*technically this is the tribe Bovini, there are some other bovines that are more antelope-like but they get their own post. this group is still colloquially referred to as bovines

*not every single recognized species and subspecies is represented because some i could find zero information on, let alone pictures. not doing breeds of domesticated species either because i’ll be dead before i finish that

*common names are taken from the IUCN red list if applicable and iNaturalist (and very rarely wikipedia)

What uncommon devotional activity do you like to engage in? Let’s share!

Sometimes I'll make my deities in video games like Sims 4 or HeroForge (custom miniatures for tabletop gaming)

Sounds super fun! Kind of like making them into a Picrew!

I used to pray in front of my rock and shell collection bcuz closer to Earth = closer to divinity

These are great!

Whenever I eat something that has beef in it, I thank Audhumla.

What about you @broomsick?

Someone mentioned this in the comments, but I love story telling! Also I’m a big fan of dedicating songs to deities. Nothing quite out of the ordinary, I suppose! I love local folk songs and sometimes, I hum or sing them in honor of this or that deity! Feels very therapeutic, and music makes for such a beautiful offering!

Every time I light the rings on my gas hob I say, "Hail Frīg, I cook with Your flame."

Shower prayers. I pray to the River Thames, Great Mother of the City, thanking Her and asking Her to wash away ill luck and ill health, during every morning shower.

Ok hi I have a question for any Norse pagans!! I’m primarily Norwegian ethnically and have felt a pull to take a closer look at Norse paganism after following Hellenic paganism for almost 7 years now, but I have no clue what resources are good or where to start. I truly don’t know much at all so beginner level resources would be really really appreciated. I know the community can unfortunately have huge bigotry issues so I figured asking instead of assuming and finding out I got wrong knowledge or biased knowledge might be best!! Thank you so much and may your days be bright!!

Hi! It's awesome you're exploring this path. I put together a "Heathenry 101" page that has info about holidays, rituals, organizations/authors to avoid, altars, and a lot of other topics.

These are some other (awesome) resources:

For a "quick start" guide to a basic format for ritual and offerings, I'll always recommend the Longship website.

Also, worth noting - no matter what anyone says, ethnicity has 0 relevance to a desire or decision to practice heathenry. There is 0 need to justify your practice based on ancestry or ethnicity.

- The Crooked Path, Kelden

Found family can be an orphaned blind fawn and two god's of death.

eyes you see in a forest

Thought and Memory.

Odin's companions