I’m glad to respond here to questions of general interest about Heathen spirituality and practice, which is the focus of my work and my website. However, unfortunately I don’t have the stamina to respond to personal requests, to run a prayer list, perform ceremonies, offer personal counseling, and the like. Nor will I address any political issues. Politics is important, but in today’s fractured and stressful world we all need to have some places that are politics-free zones, where we can focus on other important things. This website is one of them! So comments and requests on all of the topics I just listed will not be posted.
But by all means, ask your questions about Heathen spirituality: I enjoy them and enjoy responding to them, and I think other viewers on my website do likewise. These questions often stimulate new directions of thought and writing for me, and I thank you for that!
As for my stamina: I have several chronic health conditions as well as the usual challenges of old age, and my energy is very limited. I use all the energy I have to focus on my writing and on the spiritual and mental work that goes into my writing, which is truly extensive, and becomes more difficult and tiring as I age.
My role in Heathenry is as a writer, scholar, and practitioner of Heathen spirituality, theology, philosophy, rather than serving as a gythja, godwoman, clergy, counselor, or giver of pastoral care. I wish I could do everything, but I can’t! What I try to offer in my books and website is guidance for those who wish it, so people can learn to nurture and care for their own souls and for the souls of others. However much or little spiritual help we are able to access, in the end it all comes down to this: We ourselves must be the foremost caretakers of our own souls and of our relationships with our Holy Ones. With my writing, I hope to help people achieve this.
In frith,
~Winifred~
Winifred,
I am utterly impressed with your Heathen Soul Lore website. I can’t imagine the amount of work you’ve put into it, but I’m certainly glad that you did. I’ll be working my way through all your website offerings.
How very nice to hear from you, Rob, and thank you for your kind words! I’m happy to know you’ll be hanging out on my web-turf, and I hope you enjoy it!
A glad Yuletide to you and yours,
Winifred
immense thanks to you winifred for the patient compilation of so much envisioning and important lore. i look forward to the company of your mind during the turning we are entering, when light and life become scarce – i will be reading through…
mimi
Mimi, your kind words are appreciated. This is just what I hope for my website to be: support for a ‘company of minds’ as we navigate the challenges of life in Midgard, relying on Heathen faith and philosophy as we each understand and practice them. Thank you for putting it so well!
Winifred
Winifred,
I’ve just finished reading both Soul Lore books, Wandering on Heathen Ways, and Oaths, Shild, Frith, Luck and Wyrd. Your work has changed my life and given me so many answers to questions I have been trying to solve for a couple years now(putting pieces together).Thank so much for that! But I still have questions..
I’m so glad my writings are helpful to you! If you have more questions you’re welcome to post them here and I’ll do my best to respond. Thank you for your good words!
Winifred
I just wanted to let you know how amazing your work is. Your website alone has such a wealth of knowledge and helpful information (I’m going to be using your Yule blot ritual shortly). Thank you for this website, first of all. Secondly, your books are the epitome of scholarly Heathen research and are exactly what I have been searching for. There are myriad intro to Heathenry/Asatru books in existence but very few advanced ones that delve deeper into the practice, beliefs, and philosophical aspects.
I have purchased the kindle version of “Heathen Soul Lore Foundations” and a hard copy of “Wandering on Heathen Ways”. You are such a fantastic writer and your work is never boring or dry, even when exploring such complex concepts in such detail and depth. I want to thank you for contributing so much amazing work to the Heathen community and the world in general. You are a treasure.
Best wishes and much love to you, Winifred.
Ellen Marie, your praise is very heartwarming–thank you! I write about what is meaningful to me, write from heart and souls as well as mind, and it’s so rewarding to know that there are other Heathens who also find these things as meaningful as I do. I feel like there are many people out there, like you and other commenters here and many others, whom I don’t know personally, but when our minds and souls are in touch through my writing we become friends in spirit. To me, this website and my books are both a temple and a spiritual home; what I write is my worship, my gift to the Holy Ones as well as to Heathens here in Midgard. It is lovely to be able to share this with people around the world!
Winifred
Winifred,
Hello again! I have a couple of questions that I would love to get your opinion on- I have been thinking about them for quite some time. I am relatively new to Heathenry so I apologize if they seem silly!
Do you think it’s okay to Blot to certain deities during the holidays even though you aren’t particularly close to them?
If you are close to more than one deity which a lot of Heathens are, do you think your Ghost could possibly travel easily to each of their halls as long as they’re willing?
Thank you for your time!
With utmost respect,
Jacques
Hello, Jaques! I’m happy to respond to your good questions.
As for Bloting multiple Deities during the holy tides: absolutely! Whether you are close to them or not, it is not only okay, it’s a sign of respect for all our Deities and our religion as a whole when you Blot even those you’re not especially close to. Heathens need to get clear of the ‘jealous Gods’ perception, in my opinion! Our Gods, and our religion, place great value on the ties that link us all together: we are stronger and better when we are in frith together, and that includes Deities as well as people. (Of course, solitude and one-on-one relationships are good and necessary too, each in its own right time.) Think of our religious relationships as a large extended family: we are closer to some than we are to others, but especially during the holy tides it’s a good thing to get everyone together and spend some time catching up with, and enhancing our relationships with, those whom we relate to less often and less deeply. Thus, the whole kindred is knitted together by multiple, interwoven relationships, and the foundations of human-Godly frith remain firm.
As for our Ghost and multiple Godly halls: yes, I agree with you! Think about this: the tales of our lore are full of instances where the Holy Ones visit one another, go about on adventures with one another, get together for feasts, and so forth. They are also much involved in Midgard affairs. They are by no means sequestered in their own God-Halls, having no contact with one another or with us! I expect that it is the same with our Ghosts: we also will be free to move around, visit and spend time with various Deities, their God-Homes and spiritual lands, participate in their festive get-togethers, and interact with the Ghosts who live within their Halls as well. We will be free to come and go as we wish, assuming that the Deities we want to spend time with are accepting of us and have no problems with us. In my article “Goddess Sif: Kinship and Hospitality” I offer a brief picture of what it might be like in her and Thor’s Hall Bilskirnir, in company with all the folk whose patrons they were during life.
It’s good to spend time during our Midgard life building relationships with all the Deities we might want to spend time with during our afterlife, getting to know them and having them get to know us, tuning our spirits together. My articles “Earth, Water, Wind & Fire: Elemental Modes for Relating to the Deities,” and “Heathen Contemplation: The Resonance of the Heart” are examples of some of the many ways we can work on such relationships, though these are not the only ways to do so, of course.
Another very important way to build relationships with them is to work on understanding what any given Deity wants to accomplish in Midgard, and work to help them do so, making whatever contributions we can to their Midgard interests, functions, and goals. For example, near the very beginning of my conversion to Heathenry, both Frigg and Frey pushed me hard to develop the concept and application of frith among Heathens. Frigg pushed me to found and run an organization focused on Heathen frith called Frigga’s Web. Though it is no longer operational, it was a large and influential organization in its time, and contributed to the concept and practice of frith in modern Heathenry. And on my own, I’ve written and spoken much about frith, and promoted it wherever I can both within and outside of Heathenry. This, among other things, is my service to Frigg and to Frey Frith-King. My name, Winifred, means ‘friend of frith’ in Anglo-Saxon: it seems I was designated for this role from birth! That’s an example of what I mean when I suggest that we try to understand what our closest Deities want, what they’re trying to accomplish in Midgard, and do what we can, what we feel called by them to do, in their service.
My own belief is that we can continue to support their aims and work with them when we are disembodied Ghosts as well, through subtle influences of wode flowing through our Ghosts into Midgard. Though I have not yet discussed this much in my writings, I think that our Ghosts may reincarnate as well as our Hugr, likely by their own choice when they are ready, and that the time we spend in the God-Halls can be seen as a period of further self-development and training for future Midgard lifetimes and life-works. Just as the Einherjar Ghosts train daily for Ragnarok, our own Ghosts can undertake training during our time in our chosen God-Halls, training in many different ways and for many different purposes that the various Gods may be pursuing in Midgard, depending on our own Ghost’s interests, abilities, strengths, and what we care most about, as well.
Our Ghosts have access to Wode-energy, and can use that energy both when embodied and when disembodied to nurture inspiration in living persons and in other ways as well. Unbalanced Ghosts can be dangerous because of this access to wode and can influence others toward unbalanced mental states and behavior, something that is recognized in many religions and cultures around the world, but Ghosts can also be recognized as saints, sages, bodhisattvas, muses, voices of wisdom and inspiration that bridge between Otherworlds and Midgard. I hope and intend for my own Ghost to participate here, as well!
Bottom line: there’s plenty for our Ghosts to do, both living and during the afterlife! It’s certainly to our advantage to cultivate relationships with any / many of our Deities so as to provide our Ghosts with supportive guidance, companionship, environments and ‘habitats’ to support the very best possible activities, development, and contributions of our Ghost while embodied and disembodied. And for our Ghosts to inspire and enjoy themselves, while doing so!
Best wishes,
Winifred
Winifred
Thank you for your input! That was great!
On the subject of Ghost reincarnation- do you think that it has the option to reincarnate whenever ready as you said or that it will do that in time no matter what? Or can our Ghost (Gods willing) continue to reside in their halls?
Thank you again!
Very respectfully,
Jacques
Of course I can’t know the answer to your question about Ghost reincarnation for sure, Jaques! That’s part of why I haven’t yet written more thoughts about this, because I am still wondering and trying to explore this question. If, as I’ve written previously, the Ghost is given to us at the moment of our birth, Ahma enwrapped in a soul-skin to give it personhood, then it seems that it must be new for each new person, right? Not reincarnated, but coming into being at the moment of each birth. If that’s true then I don’t see a place for reincarnated Ghosts in Midgard.
But other beliefs, including both Eastern and Western esoteric traditions, posit that the Spirit or Ghost goes through an evolutionary process over the course of multiple rebirths, and those perspectives also seem to me to make sense. Ghost is a powerful being with great potential, and perhaps needs to have more than one lifetime in Midgard to do all it can and wants to do, and become all it can be.
So what I’m currently thinking is pretty much what I wrote to you earlier: each Ghost makes that choice, to return to Midgard if and when it is ready–perhaps after centuries of Midgard time spent in the God-Homes, or to stay in the God-Homes and do its growing and its work there. At any given time, there are nowhere near enough ready-to-return Ghosts to enspirit all the children being born, so that many people receive a newly-formed Ghost at birth. But in some cases the Holy Ones attending the births may instead midwife a Ghost who is returning from the God-Homes into Midgard for another round of Midgard life. I expect that then the Gods with whom that Ghost spent most of its time in the afterlife will be the special friends or patrons of the newborn person with the reborn Ghost.
Does the Ghost really have a choice about rebirth? Some religions / beliefs say that choice is not available: our spirit or soul gets only one Midgard life. Other beliefs say that karma or something similar is at work, it’s an evolutionary process and Ghost is reborn at the right time for it, without an active choice–it’s automatic. Some say that it is a choice, but that the spirit always does make that choice to be reborn because it knows it needs to do that.
For us as Heathens, I would say that freedom, and especially freedom of our souls and the choices our souls make, is a fundamental spiritual value. We don’t have dogma and doctrines, we don’t have commandments, we don’t depend on Deities for the existence and nature and fate of our souls. There is Wyrd, yes, and the role of Wyrd in all of this has yet to be fully explored by modern Heathens, in my view (one reason I’m currently writing a book about orlog!). My gut sense is that our souls possess this fundamental freedom to make their own choices, during Midgard life and afterlife as well, even though there are cosmic constraints on our options in the same way that there are natural laws here on Earth that make some things possible, other things impossible.
Wyrd operates, among other ways, as cause and effect: this is Skuld’s domain. Deeds and choices have consequences that must be dealt with. But does Wyrd operate the same way in the God-Homes as it does in Midgard? Wyrd does affect the Gods, this is clear in the lore. For what it’s worth, my sense here is that if our Ghost chooses to remain in the God-Homes, then the wyrd that affects us is the wyrd of the Gods we are attached to. Their wyrds are greater and more powerful than ours, and ours is subsumed into theirs. We follow them as they play out their wyrds and participate in that, as the Einherjar do while preparing for Ragnarok, following Odin’s wyrd. If we return to Midgard then we play out our own wyrd independently. I don’t know for sure about this, of course; but it seems to me that my Ghost is explaining it this way.
If these insights are true, then here is the situation for our Ghost, the factors that will influence our choices. We cannot escape the weavings of Wyrd, whether in Midgard or in the God-Homes. Do we choose to pursue our own wyrd through multiple lifetimes in Midgard? Or do we choose to throw in our lot with our chosen Deities and their wyrds once we settle into their God-Homes? Both of these are consequential choices; there is no right or wrong here, just our own choices and their consequences. But I believe we–our Ghosts–are free to make those choices.
You ask good questions, Jaques!
Winifred
Winifred,
Thank you for your wonderful feedback! I have another question and would love your opinion: How do you feel about silent prayers to the Deities when it comes to personal “one on one” devotion? I’ve heard some disagree with it which seems strange.
Thank you again! I truly appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions!
Very Respectfully,
Jacques
It does indeed seem strange to me, Jaques, that some people would disagree with silent, one-on-one devotion, but I see no need to be constrained by any such opinions! Why should anyone try to tell other people how not to go about their devotions? Now, as to suggestions for pursuing one’s devotions, I have a number of those on my website, very much including one-on-one and silent devotions. In particular, there are my articles on “Heathen Contemplation,” “The Great Gift,” and “Earth, Water, Wind and Fire,” among others.
There are any number of examples in the sagas and other old writings of people going one-on-one with our Deities and friendly spirits, though I don’t feel like looking up all the references at the moment. Odin comes to people privately and makes bargains with them. A devotee of Thor went off privately to the ocean shore to beg Thor’s help with fishing when his group was starving, and Thor sent a whale that beached itself. When a man who had been personally devoted to Frey died, Frey kept the man’s burial mound always free of snow and frost so that ‘nothing would come between them’–between the man’s spirit in his mound, and Frey the God of good seasons. Though not much is written about these, there were surely frequent prayers, both formal and informal, given by folks at home–housewives, elders, maidens, anyone–to their chosen Goddesses, Gods, Disir and Alfar, landwights, etc, for help and support. Far into Christian times crypto-Heathen folk maintained secluded frithyards, nooks and crannies in rocks for offerings, offerings at sacred wells and trees, and more, as we can see from many laws and church rules that forbade these things. Especially after ‘official’ conversion to Christianity, Heathens who maintained some of the old ways would have had to keep their words and actions relating to worship very private and silent, but they didn’t give them up. In Germany, Frau Holle and other Goddesses remained in folk-memory and folk practice through the centuries, and devotions to them were based on household and personal practices rather than formal group ceremonies. She is still a very popular figure in Germany.
As I understand it, forms of worship among Heathens (and other old Pagans) across many lands and many centuries ranged through the entire gamut from ‘high church’ public sacrifices and feasts, to specialized group observances such as those of warbands and mystery or priestly cults, to family and household observances, to personal and private devotions and offerings. I suggest not to concern yourself about other people’s opinions, but to pursue your own devotions as you and your Holy Ones see fit!
In frith,
Winifred
Just as another example, Jaques: throughout the ages people, women especially, have prayed to their Gods and especially Goddesses for conceiving a child, and for safe childbirth. These were certainly private, one-on-one prayers, often silent I’m sure. Another example is prayers for the safety of oneself or for loved ones who are going into battle or on an ocean voyage. My article “Matrons and Disir” talks about many such examples of personal prayer devoted to these Goddesses / demi-Goddesses / Spirits, as shown by hundreds of votive stones placed by their devotees in thanks for prayers answered.
Winifred,
Thank you so much again! You’re very kind and helpful. I hope you have a Happy Yule and I will ask more questions when I have them! Be well.
Very respectfully,
Jacques