Hearthside

Something they told me in teaching college was work smarter, not harder. How does a busy full time working woman balance that, running a household, and being the Chieftain of her tribe? The answer is, any way I can! I was talking to one of my Kyn earlier this year about how he uses Chat GPT to brainstorm when ritual writing, and then goes in and edits from there. You wouldn’t know, unless you know. Technology is the future and the future is now.  Our Kindred does mostly in-person rituals, but also the occasional online ritual, and quite a few hybrid rituals. We use Zoom for meetings. We use social media to get ourselves out there. I have recently started experimenting with Chat GPT for rituals, poetry, or just helping me to think through complex Heathen topics. I am also working on mind-mapping my Heathen practice using Obsidian. For those of you who remember the internet of the 90s where you could start researching one topic, and 2 hours later find yourself reading something entir...

  One thing I have noticed with Heathens, and Pagans more generally, is that they do things as a labour of love. (I mean… coughs …. Look at this blog. Don’t worry, I get the irony. Even though this blog is often just as much for me as my readers I could definitely monetize it if I wanted the headache.I don’t wish to stick to a schedule for posting for Patreon support though, and I don’t like the added paperwork at tax time.) I am thinking more of physical goods and events though, in this case. One of the members of my Kindred was asking how much they could sell an item for that they were making and we were happy to help them set a fair price, which allowed for people trying to negotiate them down as well. It was much higher than what they thought they could get for that work, despite their skill and quality techniques and materials.  I am thinking on an even larger scale though, like Pagan events. I am surprised what events are free or by donation, that have a huge overhead co...

I have been on a bit of a hiatus because of the intensity of the course I have been taking. It was getting progressively more intense the past few months, but the last two weeks, my residency, was so intense I was barely sleeping and not eating very well. I was a pile of exhaustion after my final exams and final presentation. The residency really opened my eyes to ways we tell time. When we talk about History in the Montessori classroom it is steeped in Timelines and Mythology from various traditions. We start with the first Great Story. This is the story of the Big Bang and the creation of the Universe, right up until the point just before the first life appears on Earth. This was the time before time. The second Great Story is the story of Life, from the first single cell organism, right up until just before humans appear. This is still the time before time. Because humans created the construct of time. A day is the time it takes Earth to rotate on its axis and a year is the time it ...

These posts are sometimes the hardest to keep up with, since it is a long-term project that may or may not yield anything interesting. In addition, I have found this year particularly difficult, at first due to personal time constraints, but also because this year has been surprising me! Rune Rasmussen talks of a 19 year cycle which he associates each year with a rune in the Swedish rune poem. What I am doing each year is looking at the rune poems, plus historical data, to see if I can predict trends for the year. Think of it as a Heathen Farmer’s Almanac or something.  I had initial thoughts based on the rune Sol as to what that might mean for 2024, and went to historical data to see if I might be correct. However, the data wasn’t showing me a particular trend. It seemed that both warm weather and rain were likely for a Sol year, but sometimes these weather patterns would go to the extreme, causing flooding or drought. The Dust Bowl started in 1930, which was a Sol year. This year...

I have been trying to write about modern Heathen history and its ties to racism for some time now, but as you can imagine there is no easy way to approach it. However, recently something happened in my classroom which might shed some light on the topic and how to approach it. Some of you may know I am an educator by profession. I work in a grade 4-6 Montessori classroom. Recently we told the 3rd Great Story. The Great Stories are about the big questions. The 3rd Great Story is about the evolution of humankind, the advent of technology, the start of agriculture, and all such things. My director asked me to make a work for our Art shelf on Paleolithic painting so that the students could really experience something of what it would be like for early humans. The work included using mortar and pestle to grind up paint into powder, then mix it with water to get the correct consistency. The students were able to paint on stone and also try painting a huge brown paper attached to the wall usin...

I am of a few minds about Jotunn women in the Lore. To me the Jotunn represent a different tribe from the Aesir and Vanir, for better or for worse. They are often “othered” because their ways are different. (Then again, the Aesir and Vanir did not always get along either.) The Aesir have a tendency to marry or court Jotunn women, and fight with Jotunn men. So are the Jotunn really as monstrous as they are made out to be? It seems like if a Jotunn woman marries an Aesir then she becomes an Aesir.  Many have argued that the Jotunn are the raw forces of nature, that are to be respected and feared but not worshipped, but that also seems a bit reductive, like saying Thor is only the God of Thunder. Angrboða faces the same reductionist logic, with some people having suggested she is one and the same figure as Gullveig/Heiðr. They have even gone as far as to equate her with Gerðr’s mother, Aurboða, presumably just because their names are similar. My interest in Jotunn largely is surroundi...