Of Wights, Mead, and Bike Rides

I had my first bike ride of the season/year yesterday. Rather than burden someone for a ride to work I had Grendal look over the bike the night before to make sure everything was good. After decking myself out in a backpack, a leather jacket, gloves, and a scarf, I was off. While it's only a 15 minute-ish ride it is still kinda chilly in the mornings, so that sort of bundling up was needed.  It was nice to ride again. My legs disagreed with me by the end of the day but I loved it. Set me off to a good start too. Healthy sort of breakfast, after ride munch, and a nice salad with an avocado(with a side of yogurt and some blah bread pudding) for lunch! While I may not need to drop any fat, I do need to tone up in general.  Though, I don't think my legs need the work. A couple years of martial arts and hula mixed kinda does that to the legs. It's my stomach and upper body that need to shape up. So, it looks like yoga and what not for that.

The mead should be reaching the point of racking. This also means that Grendal and I need to figure out what fruits we're putting in for half the batch. He knows he wants blackberry and cherry, while I'm kinda leaning towards apples and strawberries. If we stick with those, that just leaves two more that are undecided. Who knows. The book I have (The Compleat Meadmaker) suggests a couple of different fruits to use so I may stick with that.

I've been bothering Grendal with the idea of coming up with names for our different meads because, well, I'm hoping we continue to make it and possibly make it for others. I suggested 'Allfather' for the classic mead, which he responded with 'The Allfather's Eye Drops'.  I think I can compromise with 'The Allfather's Eye' and we both can be happy. I also had the idea of doing a mixed berry version in hopes that it's yummy and call it 'The Bifrost'.  And while Grendal doesn't like carbonation, I think he liked the idea of a sparkling mead to be known as 'Mimir's Well.'  I do know the apple version will have some reference to Idunna and we joked about a really red mead being a reference to Tyr, though I wonder if that would be in bad taste.

Speaking of the happenings of the past few days, Grendal and I had a little 'spook' moment the other night. Now, we have a tendency to misplace our combs. He blames it on me and while I misplace it more often then he does, I'm not the only one to blame. Anyway, we had lost our good one a few weeks ago and no amount of cleaning seemed to help. Hell, we cleaned rather well because we had a friend showing up and NOTHING! Well, the other day I came home to find our combs lying together on the bed. Of course I figured this meant Grendal had found it and was showing me as such while he was at work. So, I just put it over with the brush we had and left it at that. Later that night he goes to brush his hair with the comb and the following happened:

Grendal- Where did you find the good comb?
Me- It was just laying next to your pillow. I thought you put it there.
Grendal- Uh, no.
Me- What? *skeptical stare* You're not shitting me, are you?
Grendal- You're not shitting me?
Me- *stare*
Grendal- *stare*

Usually by this point one of us would confess to the other if we had been fooling around. I have a tendency to be easily duped in certain situations and was honestly expecting Grendal to be all 'Haha, fooled you'  yet there wasn't such a response.  He just had an uneasy look on his face and I went downstairs to do whatever it was I was going to do.

We've had spirits (both nice and grumpy) in the house before, but they seemed to either have quieted down or moved on over the years. While I do believe in the little folk, we've never had an indication of them being around. With my increased work in the world of Asatru I've begun offering foods to the Land Wights in the area. It made me wonder if I have a House Wight and they're making themselves known by doing such a thing. I'll set up another offering dish for the House Wight on the off chance we have one. Maybe that will make the atmosphere in the house a little more happy.

30 Days of Devotion: Day 5

Members of the family – genealogical connections

 Ah, the family of Odin. Well, Odin's consort is Frigg, though both deities have hard their share of sexual relations outside of that relationship. There are really only three children that are attested to Odin and that would be Thor(obviously), Baldr, and Váli.  Snori Sturluson does claim that Vidar is a son of Odin by way of the giantess Gríd. He also places Heimdalr, Bragi, Tyr, and Hod as sons of Odin, but these are only mentioned once.  So the only ones we are sure of, in the sense of literature, is Thor, Baldr, and Vali.

There are no daughters of Odin mentioned and I have never seen a claim to it.

Odin did have two brothers, Vili and Ve, whom helped Odin slay Ymir and create Midgard, all born from the same parents: Borr and Bestla.

As far as I can tell, other than the usual claims of kings being descendents from Odin, the relation to other deities ends there.

30 Days of Devotion- Day 2

How did you become first aware of this deity?


 I'm not sure if this question is referring to how I became aware of Odin in general or as a deity that I was going to follow.  I suppose I could cover both.

Growing up I was always interested in mythology. It was mainly the Greek/Roman stories and some Hawai'ian tales but I had a healthy appetite for it.  At some point I did come across Norse myths but I can't remember exactly when. Thinking back on it, it seems like the Norse deities have always been in my mind but I know that isn't necessarily true.  I guess I just can't think of a time when they weren't there.  Even through college the Norse myths weren't much of a big thing to anyone.  I took a religions of the world course and they were just barely mentioned.  Though I do take pride in being the only one to pick up on the instructor's vague description of Loki.  He was rather shocked as well.

Odin did approach me early in high school but I don't think I was ready for it.  I believe I mentioned this in a previous post but I'll give a quick summary here.  While sitting on the back porch chatting on the phone, two LARGE black birds settled into the yard.  They were two big to crows and I knew just enough about hawks and the like to know that these two weren't that.  They walked together, not bothering to peck at the ground, and came towards me.  Halfway through the yard I freaked out and went back inside.  At that point in my life I hadn't thought about deities choosing a person or anything other than the basic Triple Goddess and Hunter God in Wicca.

It's been within in the last two years that I've embraced the Norse deities.  I had, I believe, confused Thor with another deity that dealt with lightning and thunder but things were soon set straight.  When searching for a deity to connect with I honestly didn't bother with Odin.  I wanted someone else.  Maybe Thor, Heimdalr, or Sif.  I even wore Mjolnir for some time, but Thor wasn't the fit for me it seemed.  Odin, though, began to send more and more signs my way.  Crows constantly being seen and heard on my walks to work was the biggest thing.

I suppose what really solidified EVERYTHING was finding two crow feathers.  Not at the same time but in the same spot days apart.  Out of the many weeks of walking the same path over the course of a year I had never seen any bird feathers laying across the sidewalk.  On these occasions I found a single black feather.  It was just sitting there.  Honestly I continued to walk past it, both times, but something made me stop and retrieve it.  They were placed on my altar and I think that was the beginning of my wandering with Odin.

The altar is for all but he has images of himself and Huginn and Muninn.  He is the one that brought me home.