do not fix what we should break before it breaks us
Yesterday was the first new Runes Class in a while now, and the very first one since I'd agreed to start helping to take over things. I planned out the class handouts, using the basis of the one from the beginning of class and adding bunches more to it (and there are three more things I'll add to it before the next class, too, now). Plus activities.
I love activities. And I do all the activities in the book every time we move through new chapters and people love hearing about them, and so apparently I'm the new 'Activities Girl.' I'll be giving them an activity to do with the new Runes we do every single class. One at present, maybe even many, depending on my thoughts. I prepped for most of the morning. Handout making and supplies.
I left an hour early to pick up the last of my art supplies, my potluck dish, and two of the other members of the group. The drive was complicated, again, but Rhonnie got us on the right track. And we arrived at the end of a massive bottling of beer escape for the Man of the House. (They've been engaged in making mead, beer, root bear for months, and it's so awesome. The boys are so happy.)
Class started over Hagalaz. We all talked about how this rune works on a completely different level than all the runes we've done before. How it's such a serious rune. Both in the life, cutting all the chaff away, and in spells. There was this amusing moment at the very beginning where one of the people running it said she would be very hesitant to use this rune in a spell without feeling a deep necessity. And I mentioned I already had.
The group paused, and she asked me if I would change my choice. And I smiled, this interestingly fierce, proud smile, and said, No. All of this makes me even more sure it was the right thing to do. If anything, I should have written it four more times. (And we even talked later that day about how to use it in combination with another rune, we learned earlier this year, as a 'cup' for amplification and direction.)
We, also, talked about how Hagalaz was the first rune of the second Aett. (The runes are broken up into three sets of eight runes each and each Aett is different.) The second is Heimdall's Aett. Also, called The Warrior's Aett. Heimdall, the warrior, the keeper of the bridge, who struggles ever against overwhelming odds, showing unending courage in his watchfulness. And it all starts in Hagalaz with 'the cleansing destruction.'
And I can't help seeing the domino's all lined up in this. Fire. Amazon. The next two months are going to be spent in the Warrior Aett. I hadn't known until sitting there it was that. But the world knew. I look The Shield and the Sais on the wall facing my bed. Oh, the world knew. I have so much to learn, and I am no longer allowing myself to say my life doesn't need all of this now.
I said in the class I think that I'm actively in love with this first rune. Seriously. In the right place, at the right time, in love with. Which made one of the girls in my car, say she might need to be in another car, while laughing. Everyone else is very wary of this one. But it feels like home. Like right. Like the need of the times. Like another piece of armor I needed when I never knew I was putting it on.
I've never been a defender, and some small part of my heart whispers, maybe it's because you never found something you needed to defend before.
Naudhiz was still important and really awesome conversation, but it wasn't the same as the first. I really love the discussion that take place in this group now. Over the Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic and Norwegian poems. The book reading. The correspondences. How we think they talk about life itself. How they've been reflected in our last few months, and the specifically each of the weeks leading up to and away from our newest runes.
Which actually led to talking about how all the main members of Oak Grove tied themselves together in the ritual at Solstice. A web which is still on a wall in that house, and will be for the next six months. About how we've all been going through big stuff since then, all together. Big work, but never specifically only bad. Even about all in the people who weren't embracing the work that came up. Who struggled against all the sign posts.
It was a really lovely sort of group. The way they've grown together. How much we've all gone through, grown through, watched and helped supported each other through. Jobs and children and significant others. Houses and parties and this class growing slowly by all sorts. People doing the work. But, also, people not doing it. It was such an interesting, not normal, but comfortable group-wide conversation. So much more has come out of this group than I ever expected.
Activities time was a blast, but it had to be rushed which made me a little heart sad.
For Hagalaz we made The Wheel of Change, which was a hailstone with a six point star (/asterisk) which is the form in the Younger Futhark (even though we use the Elder). And you make it into a mediation device, using Above, Below, North, East, South, West. Something they could use at home. Each one means something else and you figure out what the point of the hailstone/wheel point.
All from a single rune symbol. Because I'm such a big fan of learning how to use each of these Runes in magical and practical applications. Not just as one set of divinatory symbols. Because they were so much more in their time.
For Naudhiz we made Need Cords, or Belts. You had to work through what you consider things that 'compelled' or 'constrained' you and actually pick out your True Needs. The True Needs underlying your past and present, regardless of the specific situations.
Then you named each of them into a different line of string that was then wound together, so all your needs were as one, each one as long as from the top of your head to feet. Once you named it, you put some spit on your fingers, and touch the cord, linking your essence to the need you named.
(I ended up editing mine at home. Five strands, but six different knots in it.
Love. Safety. Trust/Honesty. Family/Friends. Community. Passions.
I'm still working on how to attached a Naudhiz charm to it, too!)
After times were mostly made of fun and feasting like always.
The Lady and Lord of the house made two small chickens. There was amazing Greek salad, with slices of veggies, and mujadarrah (home made by My Girl). I brought them a small red velvet cake roll (since I usually bring them something bread/sugar related to make up for the fact almost all the food they bring can be eaten by me and has neither bread or sugar). We got to taste the homemade root beer during this time, too!
Table talk is always amazing and hilarious most of the time, and serious and not. We talk about everyone's jobs and kids and lives, the ups and down. We play catch-up, in general. Which meant, of course, there was the about five-ten minutes catching everyone up on Hope discussions across the table. It's normal, an every class thing, since she is a long distance member, and they really do care regardless of situational proclivities.
It was a surprisingly easier conversation this month than several of the months before now. For me, but, also, I think on both sides, since I got to put my chin on my hands and explain to people who've been watching me for months, I think I'm getting closer to being ready to admit I've done a one-eighty in the last three weeks where it comes to the things I couldn't stand hearing/nodding/blindly defended through in the past from/with them/everyone everywhere.
I'm finally getting toward, I'm not sure we can call it peace, but a slow-grind toward tensely-edgy acceptance with the rest of the world, about being allowed to have my own, personal, opinions. Especially ones I've earned and ones everyone's pretty much waited through me frantically doing everything else in the world but making or having or acknowledging them. I still have days where I'd really love to just hide a cave and toe 'the party line' though more often than not.
But I'm getting there. Having said my peace, all of my peace, even when I think it's entirely futile. Letting the all too obvious silences stay and not badgering points I already made for months in a row. Working with all these different new energies. Holding my breath about the whole idea the world rarely gives you an arm load of things without having a design in process for why you're going to need them. I'm scaling Black's mountain with an Amazon living in a sliver of my heart, pinging off the Fire Wall, and the beginning of the Warrior Aett is written on my wrists.
I try not to frown. They never ask more than they already know you can accomplish. But I'd really like a break, instead, and I know one isn't coming anytime soon. Which actually is another post I need to write soon. I'm in need of working on a big spell for the next two and half months for myself (which is something I do with such amazing rarity, and I'm going to want community help-support with it, which I know my actually asking directly for that happens pretty much as often as it snows in Texas).
We stayed later than planned, but it was a lot of fun. And I finished my Need Cord-Belt. And we all talked. Lazed about, giggling. Divided together. Everything really. Just friends and family and Tribe stuff. And I cleaned, because I always do. It's really sort of all just habit now. I got home something near seven hours after I left it, but it was really a lovely half day affair all things considered.
I love activities. And I do all the activities in the book every time we move through new chapters and people love hearing about them, and so apparently I'm the new 'Activities Girl.' I'll be giving them an activity to do with the new Runes we do every single class. One at present, maybe even many, depending on my thoughts. I prepped for most of the morning. Handout making and supplies.
I left an hour early to pick up the last of my art supplies, my potluck dish, and two of the other members of the group. The drive was complicated, again, but Rhonnie got us on the right track. And we arrived at the end of a massive bottling of beer escape for the Man of the House. (They've been engaged in making mead, beer, root bear for months, and it's so awesome. The boys are so happy.)
Class started over Hagalaz. We all talked about how this rune works on a completely different level than all the runes we've done before. How it's such a serious rune. Both in the life, cutting all the chaff away, and in spells. There was this amusing moment at the very beginning where one of the people running it said she would be very hesitant to use this rune in a spell without feeling a deep necessity. And I mentioned I already had.
The group paused, and she asked me if I would change my choice. And I smiled, this interestingly fierce, proud smile, and said, No. All of this makes me even more sure it was the right thing to do. If anything, I should have written it four more times. (And we even talked later that day about how to use it in combination with another rune, we learned earlier this year, as a 'cup' for amplification and direction.)
We, also, talked about how Hagalaz was the first rune of the second Aett. (The runes are broken up into three sets of eight runes each and each Aett is different.) The second is Heimdall's Aett. Also, called The Warrior's Aett. Heimdall, the warrior, the keeper of the bridge, who struggles ever against overwhelming odds, showing unending courage in his watchfulness. And it all starts in Hagalaz with 'the cleansing destruction.'
And I can't help seeing the domino's all lined up in this. Fire. Amazon. The next two months are going to be spent in the Warrior Aett. I hadn't known until sitting there it was that. But the world knew. I look The Shield and the Sais on the wall facing my bed. Oh, the world knew. I have so much to learn, and I am no longer allowing myself to say my life doesn't need all of this now.
I said in the class I think that I'm actively in love with this first rune. Seriously. In the right place, at the right time, in love with. Which made one of the girls in my car, say she might need to be in another car, while laughing. Everyone else is very wary of this one. But it feels like home. Like right. Like the need of the times. Like another piece of armor I needed when I never knew I was putting it on.
I've never been a defender, and some small part of my heart whispers, maybe it's because you never found something you needed to defend before.
Naudhiz was still important and really awesome conversation, but it wasn't the same as the first. I really love the discussion that take place in this group now. Over the Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic and Norwegian poems. The book reading. The correspondences. How we think they talk about life itself. How they've been reflected in our last few months, and the specifically each of the weeks leading up to and away from our newest runes.
Which actually led to talking about how all the main members of Oak Grove tied themselves together in the ritual at Solstice. A web which is still on a wall in that house, and will be for the next six months. About how we've all been going through big stuff since then, all together. Big work, but never specifically only bad. Even about all in the people who weren't embracing the work that came up. Who struggled against all the sign posts.
It was a really lovely sort of group. The way they've grown together. How much we've all gone through, grown through, watched and helped supported each other through. Jobs and children and significant others. Houses and parties and this class growing slowly by all sorts. People doing the work. But, also, people not doing it. It was such an interesting, not normal, but comfortable group-wide conversation. So much more has come out of this group than I ever expected.
Activities time was a blast, but it had to be rushed which made me a little heart sad.
For Hagalaz we made The Wheel of Change, which was a hailstone with a six point star (/asterisk) which is the form in the Younger Futhark (even though we use the Elder). And you make it into a mediation device, using Above, Below, North, East, South, West. Something they could use at home. Each one means something else and you figure out what the point of the hailstone/wheel point.
All from a single rune symbol. Because I'm such a big fan of learning how to use each of these Runes in magical and practical applications. Not just as one set of divinatory symbols. Because they were so much more in their time.
For Naudhiz we made Need Cords, or Belts. You had to work through what you consider things that 'compelled' or 'constrained' you and actually pick out your True Needs. The True Needs underlying your past and present, regardless of the specific situations.
Then you named each of them into a different line of string that was then wound together, so all your needs were as one, each one as long as from the top of your head to feet. Once you named it, you put some spit on your fingers, and touch the cord, linking your essence to the need you named.
(I ended up editing mine at home. Five strands, but six different knots in it.
Love. Safety. Trust/Honesty. Family/Friends. Community. Passions.
I'm still working on how to attached a Naudhiz charm to it, too!)
After times were mostly made of fun and feasting like always.
The Lady and Lord of the house made two small chickens. There was amazing Greek salad, with slices of veggies, and mujadarrah (home made by My Girl). I brought them a small red velvet cake roll (since I usually bring them something bread/sugar related to make up for the fact almost all the food they bring can be eaten by me and has neither bread or sugar). We got to taste the homemade root beer during this time, too!
Table talk is always amazing and hilarious most of the time, and serious and not. We talk about everyone's jobs and kids and lives, the ups and down. We play catch-up, in general. Which meant, of course, there was the about five-ten minutes catching everyone up on Hope discussions across the table. It's normal, an every class thing, since she is a long distance member, and they really do care regardless of situational proclivities.
It was a surprisingly easier conversation this month than several of the months before now. For me, but, also, I think on both sides, since I got to put my chin on my hands and explain to people who've been watching me for months, I think I'm getting closer to being ready to admit I've done a one-eighty in the last three weeks where it comes to the things I couldn't stand hearing/nodding/blindly defended through in the past from/with them/everyone everywhere.
I'm finally getting toward, I'm not sure we can call it peace, but a slow-grind toward tensely-edgy acceptance with the rest of the world, about being allowed to have my own, personal, opinions. Especially ones I've earned and ones everyone's pretty much waited through me frantically doing everything else in the world but making or having or acknowledging them. I still have days where I'd really love to just hide a cave and toe 'the party line' though more often than not.
But I'm getting there. Having said my peace, all of my peace, even when I think it's entirely futile. Letting the all too obvious silences stay and not badgering points I already made for months in a row. Working with all these different new energies. Holding my breath about the whole idea the world rarely gives you an arm load of things without having a design in process for why you're going to need them. I'm scaling Black's mountain with an Amazon living in a sliver of my heart, pinging off the Fire Wall, and the beginning of the Warrior Aett is written on my wrists.
I try not to frown. They never ask more than they already know you can accomplish. But I'd really like a break, instead, and I know one isn't coming anytime soon. Which actually is another post I need to write soon. I'm in need of working on a big spell for the next two and half months for myself (which is something I do with such amazing rarity, and I'm going to want community help-support with it, which I know my actually asking directly for that happens pretty much as often as it snows in Texas).
We stayed later than planned, but it was a lot of fun. And I finished my Need Cord-Belt. And we all talked. Lazed about, giggling. Divided together. Everything really. Just friends and family and Tribe stuff. And I cleaned, because I always do. It's really sort of all just habit now. I got home something near seven hours after I left it, but it was really a lovely half day affair all things considered.