thefoxandthecrow

[thefoxandthecrow]

Your deities love you. They understand you. They understand when you are overwhelmed with internal challenges that seem insurmountable. They will still be there for you when you come out of the other side. They will listen to you and validate your feelings and help you understand something if you’re having trouble.

You are not ruined. There is no difficulty that is permanent. You will be able to do whatever you need to do to see the sunshine again.

Drink some water. Maybe eat a food. Be a little silly. Know that you are loved so deeply.

[thefoxandthecrow]

Loki | Scarlip

Artist profile: SaharaBern on DeviantArt

#cw blood #loki #art #oh i love this #the intensity in lokis eyes #wow wow wow

[thefoxandthecrow]

The other day, in a server I'm in, someone described Loki's methods as "I'm going to break your bone again so that it heals right this time", and I've just been thinking about that a lot.

#yup #yup yup yup #loki

[thefoxandthecrow]

The Soul and Self in Norse Mythology

It is a Norse belief that the soul and self are made up of multiple parts.

Lyke - the actual physical body, brought to life by the gods.

Hamr - the energetic or astral body, the shape or skin you wear that is perceived by others.

Fylgja - the accompanying guardian, the external (and typically animal) extension of yourself that represents your true character. Can generally only be seen by those with second sight or in dreams. Seeing your fylgja bloodied is an omen of your impending death.

Hamingja - the personified and inherent luck and fortune from your familial line, the extension of yourself that is your personal power. This part of your soul could be lent to others to assist in times of great peril. Certain individuals (hamrammr) can also perform hamfarir, or a shapejourney, where you shift your hamingja into an animal and can roam the world. If your hamingja was harmed, then so was your human body.

Sinne - the mind, made up of two parts: hugr (the conscious mind) and munr (the unconscious mind). This is personified in Odin’s two ravens, Hugin and Munin.

Önd - the spirit or life breath that distinguishes the living from the dead.

Goði/Gyðja - the higher or divine self, the voice behind intuition that remains forever loyal and true to your best interests.

Öðr - the divine consciousness, the ultimate inspiration or enlightenment through which you experience the divine.

[thefoxandthecrow]

I have been thinking about my path when it comes to religion and whatnot and I’ve made the description I am parting with witchcraft (though tarot will always be something im interested in) and I solely wanna focus on norse paganism.

I’ve also decided for myself that I will worship the entire Norse pantheon, though Loki will remain my “patron” if you will. He was my entry to this and will forever have a space in my heart for it.

Its been a decision a long time coming but I’m glad I finally got there in the end

[thefoxandthecrow]

The Gods love you, little one. They love you so, so much, more than all the pebbles of the earth and all the stars of the sky. The Gods love you, you whom they called their child, you whom they embraced in stillness and light, you to whom they gave life, you whom they support and soothe and carry forward through your sorrows.

The Gods walk with you. Every day, every moment. They are in your breath, in your eyes, in your beating heart. For everything that surrounds you is a God, everything is infused with the divine, everything is interwoven and nothing is ever alone, even you, little one. The Gods will never abandon you, for abandoning you would mean abandoning themselves. Even death, your last companion, is one of them.

Breathe, close your eyes, and remember who it is by your side. You are brushing against the unspoken; eternity is in the palm of your hand. The endlessness of the universe and each of its tiny pieces is there, with you, within you. And that endlessness loves you. You, a child born of the earth and who will blow away with the wind, you are cherished by those who witnessed the beginning of time. The Gods love you, little one. No matter how many times you will need to be helped up, their love, like themselves, will never end.

[thefoxandthecrow]

Who would've thought paganism would lead me to reading a 318 page long essay from the 1930s about Loki

#lokean #its interesting though

[thefoxandthecrow]

Who Sigyn was

Loki is mischievous. Loki breaks the rules. Loki is complicated.

Sigyn is simple.

Sigyn is kind. That is all. And yet not.

If Loki is the outcast crouching under the bridge with a sleepingbag and a waggon full of scraps, Sigyn is the one who opens a new inclusive shelter in town. If Loki is the protester marching in the streets and getting himself arrested, Sigyn is the one who bails him out. Loki's spirit is in the guy who gets in trouble at school for punching bigoted classmates in the face, Sigyn's spirit is in the friend who turns up at the principals office to defend him.

Loki rebels, Sigyn defends. Loki suffers, Sigyn protects. Loki organises a secret after school club to take down capitalism? Sigyn is the one who bakes them cookies.

Loki is a trickster, a rebel, and an outsider. Loki lives on the edge of society, all societies. He breaks the rules he thinks needs to be broken, he refuses to be boxed in, he bends the rules he thinks are wrong. Loki is one with the outcasts. Loki is one with those up-turning their lives, changing the world, refusing to bend to societies norms.

Sigyn is the only who protects the rebels, the outcasts, and the ostracised. So many times I see Loki described as their protector, but he is not. Loki marches with them in the streets, he screams for justice and a place to be diffrent in peace just as loudly.

But when you've come home from a march, exhilarated and exhausted, don't you need someone who'll sit and listen to everything you saw and did, and order some takeout? That is Sigyn. When you log of the internet, crying, after arguing with some bigot online, don't you want someone to rant to, to cry to, someone to hold you and comfort you? That's Sigyn. When you are desperate and alone, cast out, you need someone to take you in, to accept your differences and love the non-conforming parts of you? That is Sigyn.

Loki may be on the front lines of cultural change, rebellion. He may be the one supping with outcasts, but Sigyn is the one who cooks the meal.

Sigyn's compassion is the cogs that keeps the machine of rebellion working. If Sigyn had not stayed with Loki in that cave, and held that bowl over his head to catch the poison, would Loki have ever made it to Ragnarök? Was it not for Sigyn's compassion, would Loki and his children have ended/changed the world?

I don't think so.

Sigyn is fighting alongside Loki and the rebels, but she fights with different means. Calm, caring means. Soft means. Patient means. Compassionate means.

Sigyn is the comfort we come home to when exhausted after fighting the world.

#sigyn

[thefoxandthecrow]

Basic Recipe of a Spell

Ingredients

Intent (what is the purpose of your spell?)

A correspondence (candles, stones, incense, etc.)

A source of power (your own energy, fire, a quartz crystal, etc.)

A binder to connect all of them (an offering, an incantation, dance, art, writing, etc)

A cleanser (a bell, ethically sourced sage, salt, etc.)

Steps:

Cleanse your working space

Ensure that your intent is clear and loud in your mind for the duration of the spell

Set up your working space in an organized way

Activate your source of power

Activate your correspondence

Activate your binder

Repeat but in reverse

This is not a definitive guide, but is rather a very easy to follow guide to making spells for those who don’t know where to begin! I recommend you tweak it for your needs and to match your magickal style.

#spells

[thefoxandthecrow]

Anyway I’m really, really fucking tired of people pretending that marginalized followers of Odin aren’t treated just as shitty as Lokeans are, and acting as if spewing all sorts of bullshit about how Odin is a terrible deity and everyone who follows him is garbage, isn’t extremely harmful to those of us who have been shoved violently out of every heathen space we’ve tried to exist in.

As if those of us who are vocal about Odin’s aspects as a defender of queer people, physically disabled people, and neurodivergent people, aren’t aggressively silenced and shoved out of what are supposedly our own spaces.

My options for heathen community are either fashy brosatru, or people who pressure me to tear down my own deity and constantly list all his bad aspects and apologize for his shitty followers before I can open my mouth to say anything positive about him or my practice.

Pardon me for not wanting to have to do that.

Aaaaaaand this is why I’m solitary!

[thefoxandthecrow]

I’ve been seeing something in the pagan circles of Tumblr that’s been bothering me and I just want to give my two cents on it

On a number of pagan blogs, but seemingly most on lokean blogs, I see people sending asks with “hey I reached out to this deity but they don’t seem to like/accept me”. And the answer the people running those blogs give are always along the lines of “aww don’t worry no deity would ever dislike or not accept you!! You must have interpretended it the wrong way, there couldn’t be a reason this deity turned you down”

And!! I think that’s not a healthy mindset to have! Pagan gods aren’t all ‘love and light and unconditionally accepting of everyone’, and I think trying to fit them into such a box limits them severely.

I think it’s entirely possible for gods to turn down certain people. Nevermind that we know nothing about these people who feel rejected, who could hold hold harmful ideas that the gods may not want to be involved with in such a way, but gods have their own agendas as well. They can have their reasons for not wanting people as their followers. Maybe they aren’t ready for their lessons, maybe there is other reasons, I can’t possibly speak for any deity. But they have a right to turn down people just as much as people have a right to turn down gods who approach them.

I think more helpful advice would be to check a few things to make sure a deity actually refused you:

-did you ward your space from malevolent entities? Spirits could pretend to be other spirits or gods you’re trying to contact. Make sure you have enough protection set up and cleanse your space.

-have you checked using your trusted divination methods? This should be able to confirm wether your hunch is right or not

-have you reached out to this deity in a respectable way? Read up on how this deity or deities of this pantheon were approached. Maybe you just happened to do something they disliked, giving the wrong impression (if you did, you can apologize and try again, just repeat the other steos too)

-how does your own view of yourself play into this? Do you have low self-esteem? Maybe you think you were turned down because you yourself think you’re not worthy. If you think this may be a factor, try to use divination to get the actual answer. Or, if you suspect your divination reading may be clouded by this as well, try to find someone who is not involved/does not know you to do a reading for you

-lastly, did you ask why they turned you down? If you know why, you could possibly work on it and approach them again later

Forgive the long post, I hope this helpful for the people who are running into this problem

#important

[thefoxandthecrow]

Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started Practicing

Chakras are part of closed practices. Find a different theory on energy centres and how they work. I have my own here but there are many more that exist.

Do your research. Question everything. Don’t follow Tumblr posts blindly. Do your research, make sure that research is credible. Some authors out there are shitty (Edred Thorsson for example). Some Etsy shop owners appropriate. Do your research.

Support minority businesses! Support local businesses!

The best basic herbs to have on hand are: sage, rosemary, cinnamon, thyme, lavender, sea salt. 

For the love of the gods, please ward. The first time you ward, you will most likely sleep upwards of 10+ hours because it is draining as hell but WARD. Wards will keep you safe from entities that seek to harm you.

ALWAYS have a good banishing spell and a good return to sender spell on hand if you need it. Here is Part 1 of a good masterpost on protections and warding.

Always be a skeptic. Don’t just believe things blindly. Is a god telling you they’re an actual god? Question them. Do your research on that god. Always question.

DO NOT INGEST ESSENTIAL OILS. They’re meant to be applied topically with a carrier oil. Don’t ingest them.

Some herbs will interact with your medication if you’re on them. If you’re on medication and want to try herbal remedies, talk to your doctor to make sure that your herbal remedy won’t negatively interact with your medication.

Tarot cards don’t need to be gifted or stolen in order to work. That’s a myth. However, if you feel like you’d like your tarot decks to be gifted to you, do that. Whatever you’re comfortable with.

Your first tarot deck doesn’t have to be explicitly Raider Waite Smith. My first deck was a variation on the traditional RWS style and it allowed me to read tarot more intuitively.

There’s no shame in using a tarot guidebook. There’s 78 cards that’s a LOT to memorize. I haven’t memorized them all and I’ve been reading tarot for two years now. Take your time and don’t be embarrassed to read tarot from a guidebook. I do paid tarot readings and still use my guidebooks.

If you’re worried about wasting food as an offering, it’s okay to eat them. I do it. Many others do it. If you’re still wary about eating the food, if you have plant friends, you can just bury the offerings (especially relevant for chthonic worshippers).

The Theoi website is one of the best for information on Hellenism. Every thing written on that website is cited back to an Ancient Greek text, or even several.

PLEASE PRACTICE FIRE SAFETY. If you’re burning an object in a metal bowl, don’t touch the bowl afterwards. You may burn yourself. Have something to put out a fire on hand should something happen. Don’t burn hair. Crack a window so you don’t inhale smoke. Be safe with fire.

Personalize your spells! If you find a spell on tumblr that you wanna try but don’t have an ingredient, go with your instinct and research what it could be replaced with! Tumblr spells are guidelines and you can modify that shit to your heart’s content.

[thefoxandthecrow]

This Blog is Heathen and...

Is for Civil Rights

Is against LGBT Discrimination

Believes the Norse Gods will decide who they want to work with

Is against Nazism, Stalinism and Radical Nationalism

Affirms that rigid gender roles are outdated and a burden on evolving society

Recognizes deities as living beings capable of evolving.

Insists that Nazis and White Supremacists take their historically inaccurate shit from 1920-1945 and get it out of our Religion

Reblog if your blog is all of these things too. I need more people who act like fucking decent human beings.

[thefoxandthecrow]

Here’s a periodic reminder that Gesta Danorum exists, and that it’s a good idea for Heathens to read at least the first bit. Even if you want to stick with solely the Eddic version of things in your own practice, it’s important to know where scholars and co-religionists are coming from when they bring up a version of the myths that only Saxo talks about.

#to read

[thefoxandthecrow]

I would just like to point out that Snorri doesn’t usually talk about hair/skin/eye colour when it comes to the deities (with some exceptions) but he specifically calls Nott “black and swarthy” (a.k.a dark skinned and presumably dark-haired). 

Nott is Thor’s grandmother. Thor’s grandmother is not white. He’s not your “mighty Aryan warrior” he is the mixed race patron of farmers, slaves, and other “common folk”.

#*sips tea*

[thefoxandthecrow]

I want y’all to know that at least ONCE, your deity(s)/spirit guide(s)/angel(s) has watched you sleep with their eyes softening in endearment at your gentle, sleeping face. They leaned over, hovering their lips above your forehead with their eyes closed, taking a moment to hear the darling sound of your slow breathing & taking in the waft of your sweet scent, before they placed a kiss on your forehead in a smitten moment of tender fondness. They protect you in your most vulnerable state whilst they fall more in love with you!!! They love you!!! Every part of you!!! Pls remember this!!!!

#this is so soft i cant

[thefoxandthecrow]

Hey everyone, as you may have heard, we have been targeted by harassment and fraudulent reports of copyright infringement. People who don’t believe we should exist have threatened us and targeted our Directors with hate speech with regards to their gender identities and sexual orientation. 

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