Welcome to my website! I’m Winifred Hodge Rose, and I’ve followed a Heathen path for more than thirty years, serving as a scholar, writer, leader, teacher, priestess, and oracular spaewife in many Heathen venues.
The background of this photo shows the carved ravens on the top of my spaeworking high seat, handcrafted to my design by a Heathen artisan in 1995. I fondly imagine that the ravens are imparting Thought and Memory to me as I sit there; I can always use the help!
I grew up as the daughter of a US diplomat stationed in various countries during the 1950s and 1960s, and later lived for years in Greece (17 years as child and adult) and Germany (7 years as child and adult). I spent 7th through 9th grades attending a German gymnasium (high school), spent most of the years of my first marriage and bilingual child-raising in Greece, integrated with a Greek family, and worked in Germany for a couple of years. I learned foreign languages through immersion, and learned to observe and adapt to different cultures and world-views. These experiences have supported my efforts to learn the old Germanic languages and to understand, as well as possible, ancient Heathen world-views and adapt them for modern Heathen use.
I came to Heathenry through a number of gradual steps during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Spiritual life was always important to me, and I experimented with various religions during young adulthood, including Zen Buddhism and Hinduism. There was much I liked about these, but eventually decided that I wanted to follow a religion that had some links to my ancestry and history. Having had many Christian missionaries in my family and ancestry, I settled into the Episcopal church and its choir for a number of years that were largely spiritually satisfying. I enjoyed the many old customs and little-known holidays that our priest followed at our church, and didn’t realize until much later that the ones I enjoyed the most had Heathen roots.
But I did have ongoing problems with some of the central beliefs, such as the idea that humans are a separate creation, not an integral part of nature, the lack of feminine representation in the Godhead, and the feeling that a lot of the Old Testament was just ‘not my thing,’ among others. I started slowly moving in other directions, first exploring neo-shamanism as a way to come into closer contact with the spiritual realities of nature that I had sensed all my life.
My real wake-up call was a bit of a strange one. A friend had visited places in Israel and Palestine that are considered holy by several religions and millions of people, and wanted to tell me about them, thinking that as a Christian I would have the same reverence for these places that he did. My inner reaction as he was speaking surprised me: “though I respect the meaning these places have for others, these are not my own holy places.” I didn’t say anything at the time, but walked away in deep thought, wondering what I meant by that statement to myself.
‘Place’ has always been very important to me. My childhood was structured and defined by the places we lived in, visited, camped and hiked in, boated in, with my diplomat-and-avid-outdoorsman-birdwatcher father: various places in northern and southern Greece and Germany, Austria, Normandy, England, Bangladesh (when it was still East Pakistan) and India with the beautiful places in the surrounding foothills, Himalayan mountains and seasides there, also South Africa, Botswana, states along the East Coast USA, and more.
As a child and as an adult, in each place I walked I picked up traces of something deep—the character and the deep history of the land, which I now believe were subconscious connections with the various landwights and ancestral spirits, the spirits and energies inhabiting the lands. And somehow, I’ve always sensed time and history in the blowing of the wind; I seem to ‘smell’ or inhale them in some indescribable way—traces of memory, of Being and meaning, the history of people, of landscapes, of soil and stone, of ecosystems and the beings that inhabit them. None of which I can explain or demonstrate in any way (especially when I was a child), but which are and always have been deeply meaningful to me. Among other things, these feelings led me to my career in landscape ecology, soil science, and watershed management.
So, back to my conversion experiences….I wondered ‘if that isn’t my holy land, where is my holy land and why is it holy to me?’ This question took awhile to explore, because I had experienced so many beautiful lands and their deep histories, around the world. But I realized that in some, my roots were quite shallow, some were of medium depth, while in others my roots went very deep. The deepest were the landscapes and remarkable features of Europe, with some areas, like the Alps and prehistoric sites, going even deeper than others.
Then I started asking: why are these lands and places holy to me? I began studying their languages, cultures, histories—both human and their equivalent knowledge in ecosystem terms—and then learning more about their ancient religions and philosophies. When I read Paul Bauschatz’s The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture, I felt that I’d finally found the philosophy I’d been searching for through many college courses and years of reading philosophy on my own, and had never been satisfied with until then. I felt I had found people who, in some ways at least, perceived and thought like me.
At first the Germanic / Nordic Deities, their myths and what was known of their religion didn’t appeal to me, or seem very real; I was more interested in the philosophy, literature and languages. Then I started having dreams of Woden walking through the Alps with me and pointing out the views, and of Frau Holle nudging me onto unseen paths through dark, primeval woods at night. I had been learning methods of soul-faring from books on neo-shamanism for a couple of years prior to that, and my otherworldly life started filling up with many Heathen Deities and associated wights.
Once the Heathen Gods and Goddesses started appearing to me in person, my viewpoint changed very rapidly! Frigg pushed me hard to found and lead the organization called Frigga’s Web: A Frithstead for all Heathen Folk, which was active and influential for years. I became involved in many directions of Heathenry, set my feet firmly on a Heathen path of research, writing and practice, and have followed it ever since.
I have Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in the natural sciences, and a Master’s degree in political science. My political science studies focused on not only the sociopolitical aspects of conflict, conflict resolution, and cooperation, but also on the biological, ecological and evolutionary aspects of these behaviors among animals as well as humans. This background has supported my study and writing on Heathen frith and related topics of Heathen ethics.
I’m now retired from my career as a senior research scientist working on methods for watershed and natural resources management on military installations in the US and Germany. I’m blessed with two grown children, three growing grandsons, and a good life in the Illinois countryside with my blacksmith husband Rosten Dean Rose and various critters wild and tame. You can see some of Rosten’s beautiful work on this website: http://www.blacksmithfoundry.net The colored painting, bright or subtle, was done by me; Rosten likes black for his ironwork, and asks me to take on the painting or rubbing of pigments whenever the customer (inexplicably to him) wants something colorful!
Nowadays I consider myself an independent scholar, author, publisher, and practitioner of Heathen spirituality, philosophy, and theology. When I started self-publishing my books a few years ago, I felt that at age 70 I had embarked on a whole new phase of life, an exciting new career! It’s a good feeling, and I enjoy the work. My publishing imprint is Wordfruma Press: https://www.wordfrumapress.net/
Here’s a space where you can post questions and comments, and read what others have posted along with my responses: https://heathensoullore.net/questions-and-comments/ There is a note at the beginning of that page that mentions topics I won’t discuss, but otherwise I’m glad to hear from you!
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy this website! Come back often; it’s always growing…
In frith,
~~Winifred~~