Sigh. The more I learn, the more I feel connected to all the gods. But right now my mind is all interested in figuring out who I see where that I've lost that connection I used to have with Freya and Odin. I mean, I had a little Odin moment today, and I still know that Freya is acting in my life, I just don't feel it the way I used to. I hope it comes back. I miss it. 

I'm not sure if anyone reads this anymore, but I have reached a decision about all the confusion I've been having lately regarding whether I want to pursue heathenry or more general neo-paganism.

 What I decided is that I'm not going to do either. I am currently going to stop researching and spend some time figuring out what it is that I believe outside of the doctrines of any particular religion, and this is what I have so far:

 1. I really like the idea of circular time. I have written myself a little prayer to say every day at sunset (because I think sunsets are the most beautiful things in existence and because, for me, they are the greatest symbol of the divine) about it being the loving union of day and night and recognizing that after sunset will be night, then dawn, then day again for all of time. But it isn't only daily. Also the moon cycles and the sun cycles and the decades and the weeks, etc.

2. The Aesir and Vanir. This is something from heathenry that I can't turn back from. Sometimes I wonder if they are the perfect gods for me, but I have made a sort of oath to them by approaching them and I know I can't get rid of them. I've made such good friends with Freya and Odin has done a little bit of bossing me around, so I know that I can't turn away from them. This is the one thing that keeps me most from thinking that it is neo-paganism. I know that neo-paganism is pretty open and I can worship the Aesir and Vanir and still be a sort of eclectic neo-pagan, but it's sort of hard for me for the reasons stated in the entry about my confusion.

 3. The sacredness of nature. This is obviously important as I am searching for an earth-based religion. Also the energy in the world and how it is recycled and all that. But that goes back to the cycles from number one.

4. I want to start meditating again. 

5. The nature of the gods is that they are anthropomorphizations of particular sets of natural forces. I have found a place where I can view Freya both as a beautiful woman, but also as a force. I can see Thor as a red bearded man, but also as Thunder. We anthropomorphize them in order to learn from them and be able to have myths about them.  In order to understand them better. But they are much more than characters in a story. They are what pushes along existence.

6. I asked myself the question of fate and free will, and what I came up with, I believe is along the lines of the beliefs of the heathens via the Norns. That is, of course, assuming I understand the Norns correctly. We exist in a balance between fate and free will. Our fates are created through the decisions we make, not by someone outside of ourselves weaving a great fabric of everyone's fates, decided long before we have been born. At the same time, I cannot believe that we always have the freedom to do whatever we want in any circumstance. The decisions that we make create the directions our lives will go, at least in part. For example, the fact that I am a dancer puts on me a fate that I would not have had had I decided to be a literature major instead. If I had been a literature major, my fate would not be to pursue a career in dance and worry whether my degree would be "legitimate" enough for me to get a job someday. Those decisions have determined the fate that I will have in my future.

7. I think I need to call myself a neo-pagan because if I call myself a heathen, I find that I feel I have no room to make it my own. As a heathen, I would feel the need to worship exactly as the ancestors did, and I don't know if that's how I want to live my life. The Nine Noble Virtues are indeed good ways of living life, but I don't know that I want to venerate my ancestors that much. I have always felt problems with my immediate ancestors, and know very little about my older ones. In fact, there is a myth in my family that I am related to Eva Braun, the lover and perhaps wife of Adolf Hitler. That's not exactly an ancestry I would like to follow. 

8. The moon is female. Not so say the heathens. A place where I wish I could change heathenry.

9. I like rituals, even if they seem a little silly when I'm not actually performing them. It's been months since I did one, but I really liked them when I did. I don't know how to do a blot.

10. The idea of a coven weirds me out. No offense to coven people, but being in a coven just does not appeal to me. On the other hand, the idea of joining a kindred really does appeal to me, and so I think that even if I decide not to be a strict reconstructionist, since I will always honor history and the Aesir and Vanir, I may still one day join a kindred.

 

And that's all for now. 

As soon as I came back to school, something felt different. Bard has always been a really spiritual place, as the Hudson Valley has long been considered an area of high spiritual energy or something. Anyway, coming here has reminded me how all I've been doing for the last three months has been to read. I mean, I made good friends with Freya and I learned a lot and everything, but I miss actually practicing a religion.

I don't think I want to be a reconstructionist. Which is sad to me because I want to want that. But I remember how much I loved being a neo-pagan a few months ago, and how I got really excited while starting to learn more about the gods about reconstruction, but I just don't think it's right for me. For one thing, I don't have a particular connection to history. I don't think their religion was necessarily amazing. I'm kind of a girly girl, and there's a lot of fighting and things.

So anyway, now I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. Now that I've made friends with the heathen gods, I don't feel like I can go back to "great goddess and the horned god." It wouldn't feel right. I need to honor these gods in my life because they have been helping me to become the woman I want to be. I don't want to be a "witch" because magic isn't what's most important to me. But at the same time I can't keep going on trying to reconstruct just for the hell of it. There were so many things I liked about being a pagan. I liked that I could change things to make more sense to me. I loved the rituals. I liked that the moon was a woman and not a man. I don't feel spiritual anymore.

I'm sort of half inclined to lean toward "wiccatru" or whatever they call it and take what I like from both of them, but I think that would feel false. I know both the Wiccan and the Asatru objections to that, and I think they are all valid issues.

Argh!!!!!

I just don't get why everything pagan-related is seen as evil. I've just been watching "The Haunted" on the Discovery Channel. It's about a haunted house and how there's evil everywhere. And at the beginning when they were setting up the feeling of the show, they mixed a picture of a full moon in with all the graphics of blood covered evil ghosts and things. And I really hate that she's portrayed as evil. I mean, the full moon is one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen.

 I understand why. I mean, in legend, she's associated with werewolves, and the full moon is seen as the night when it's easier for the evil spirits to come back and haunt us. But why use her as a scary scene in a scary show? 

 I dunno, I'm getting bothered by everything pagany being seen as evil. I mean, everyone else pagany is annoyed by it, too. But this is the first time it's really bugged me. 

I'm kinda annoyed at myself. Tonight I went to have my first all-outdoor full moon ritual. I took my altar outside and got dressed up nice for my gods and went outside and started. But as soon as I finished casting my circle and started asking the gods to join me, I felt something tingly on my arm, and I looked, and it was a big huge spider. I kinda freaked out a little bit. I flicked it back into the grass, and kept going with the ritual. But my concentration was already broken. I kept feeling phantom spiders creeping all over me. So I didn't move from the place where I was standing for the entire ritual. I didn't sit down and meditate like I usually do. So the ritual was really short. I was so frustrated with myself for not being able to concentrate. Obviously the spider wasn't going to come back and bite me. But I just couldn't pay attention. Argh!