Winifred Hodge Rose
If you are not familiar with the Aldr soul, here are two articles for reference.
https://heathensoullore.net/aldr-and-orlay-weaving-a-world/
https://heathensoullore.net/study-guide-6-exploring-your-aldr-orlog-werold/
Meditation
Now relax, let your Lich feel heavy and loose, and take some deep, gentle breaths. In your imagination, sense that you are present with the Well and the Tree. From this holy place, our Aldr-souls are setting forth on a journey through Time, a journey of memory and mystery, beginning from the most ancient of ages, and moving to the present moment of time.
Eons. Great ages of Time. Strata building up layer by layer on the Earth, under the sea. Soils forming, and sediments, layer upon layer, containing within them histories of Earth’s life.
Earth forms her Ealdor-yard, her mantle of power, that contains and protects her and the life upon her. Atmosphere, ionosphere, magnetosphere: layers of power held in place by gravity and the inner workings of our World.
Ages. Layer upon layer of lives: ocean lives, land lives, plant lives, animal lives, always evolving and taking shape. They build upon one another, are shaped by their surroundings, shape themselves.
Generations. The Gods and the Norns and the Great Spirits of many beings give a touch here, a tweak there, a gift, a push, at just the right time, in just the right place, to shape what is coming into being. And so the generations arise, lay down their influences, pass away.
We, the living, the Aldr-beornum, children of Aldr, Time-Children: we are shaped by all these layers.
Our Aldrs are sung and woven into being by the Norns as they, and we, take up the layers of What-Is and shape them into What-Is-Becoming. Day by day we shape the layers of our lives.
The World-Tree grows, laying down its rings of life, ever-expanding. My own Werold grows, shaped by all I am, all I experience, all my deeds. Layer by layer, day by day, my Werold grows as the Great Tree grows.
Aldr. Being-In-Time. Time-Body. Intricate weaving of the Norns, of my ancestors going all the way back to the beginning. Rooted in the past, growing in the present, uniquely shaped into my own Aldr-Being.
This day, this moment in time, to be shaped by me, blessed by the Holy Ones, laid as my Aldr’s daily offering, here at the foot of the World Tree, at the Well of Wyrd.
We are the Time-Children, together weaving Life into layers of Time, age upon age upon age.
And here is Aldr’s mystery: it does its Time-work while standing in the sacred Now, the very instant of Becoming, the No-Time outside of Time, as it fills the drop of dew that hangs in the air, ever falling from the boughs of the Tree into the deeps of the Well.
***
In honor of Aldr’s mystery and the sacred Now, here is a song I made, dedicated to Werthende / Verdandi. Werthende (adapted from the name Verdandi in Old Norse) is one of the three Wyrdae or Norns, who ward the Well of Wyrd and nourish the great Tree of the Worlds. She rules the domain of Becoming: the very instant of time when a being or a deed ripens from the layers Wyrd has laid, and springs forth to lay new layers and respond to Scyld’s tuggings, faint or strong, upon its thread of life. I picture Werthende in a gown of red here, representing the blood of life. Her name is pronounced WARE-then-deh, or VARE-than-di in Old Norse, if you prefer to use that version of her name.
Werthende: Song of Becoming
- Red the threads of Werthende’s weaving,
Blood of birth and life brings she.
Her needle’s point, a world unfolding:
The endless Now of budding deeds.
2. The wave of Time moves on unmoving,
Just as a wave moves not the Sea.
All flows past that point of shaping:
What is becoming, what should be.
3. Pierced with knowledge no words capture,
Thread on which worlds hang like pearls,
The soul is strung, that seeks to venture
Within the Well’s green-shaded furls.
4. Cupped in moss, the deepest wonder
Of all that is, lies hidden here.
Drops of dew, the Tree’s deed-plunder,
Fall through boughs like sweat and tears.
5. A mighty maid, come from the East-lands,
Gowned in red sits spinning there,
With sisters two; their threefold shaping
Weaves a web both dark and fair.
6. And over all, the great Tree arches:
The shape of all that has been won.
Life flows through its limber branches:
Thread that Werthende’s hands do spin.