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Sun Runes

You can create your own set of sun runes (or cards if you are feeling particularly crafty). 

Sigyn's name means Victory Woman. She is the butterfly goddess, the lady of compassion, goddess of caregivers, wife of Loki, grieving mother. What follows is my gnosis about her. For a more scholarly article please see my paper Sigyn: Butterfly Goddess published in Witches & Pagans Magazine.

In the Fireverse, Sigyn is the only being with any agency left by the end of time. Everyone else is caught in the Prophecy (Voluspa) either trying to achieve it or trying to resist it. By the time Ragnarok comes, the other gods have done everything they can to set up the conditions that will result in a properly functioning next universe. Those who have a role to play in making Ragnarok happen try to do their assigned parts, but things don’t go exactly as the Prophecy foretold, and without Sigyn’s actions, the death of one universe and the birth of another would not be achieved. Hers is the final victory, the end and beginning. She presides over the ends and beginnings of life both for humans and for universes.

As the city of Minneapolis, and the US as a whole, begin the process of rethinking what policing might look like in the wake of the unrest following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the MPD, let me tell you a story from the Nights of the Burning.

Unlike my neighborhood, which the authorities—including the police—in effect abandoned to three nights of riot, looting, and arson, the Indigenous neighborhood here in Minneapolis saw very little destruction. Everyone agrees that this was thanks to the AIM (American Indian Movement) Patrol.

The AIM Patrol as we know it today originated in the Indigenous activism of the 60s, but its roots are firmly grounded in the old tribal models of self-policing.

It turns out that the stories that circulated locally attributing the protest-related arson to out-of-town assholes were correct. Only some of the arsonist assholes were, as bruited, White Supremacists, but all of them—of the ones that have been caught so far, anyway—were from somewhere else. Assholes drove in from all over the state—and from out of state—to burn other people's neighborhoods. Whatever their motivations, I think we can all agree that those who would do such things are, indubitably, assholes.

One night the AIM patrol caught some kids who had driven 100 miles from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, attempting to torch the Seward Co-op, a worker-owned and -operated neighborhood grocery.

The AIM patrol, armed only with baseball bats, stopped the kids and non-violently—I won't say there was no implied threat of violence—herded them into the middle of a parking lot.

Continuing the novel gnosis series of posts, wherein I discuss religious insights gained via writing my unpublished behemoth Some Say Fire, today I'm talking about Rindr. Rindr is kind of an obscure goddess so I'll start with an introduction to her story in the Lore, which is what Asatruars and other heathens call our religious canon. Rindr is the daughter of Billing, king of the Ruthenians. That sounds like she must be a human but she is considered a jotun, also called ettin or giantess. Odin needed to father his son Vali to be an agent of vengeance and decided Rindr was to be the mother. He set out to woo her in disguise as a warrior named Roster, but she did not accept him. He tried twice but was rejected both times, so instead Odin turned himself into a witch named Wecha and used magic. The two main interpretations of this story by scholars are the agricultural metaphor interpretation that Rindr is a personification of the frozen winter earth that needs to be thawed and fertilized, or the feminist interpretation that Odin is a problematic figure. I don't subscribe to either of those interpretations in my novel gnosis.

Rindr was born with the potential to become a goddess, like some other jotnar who joined the Aesir, but didn't finish becoming one until bearing the god-child. Her story then is a story of the trial of initiation that makes one reach one's potential, similar in general movement if not in detail to Odin's trial on the tree. The ways in which Rindr doesn’t quite pass the goddess ascension tests and how Odin figures out how to make it work anyway highlight exactly what those tests are and what they are for.

This simple ceremony blesses your home with the power of the sun and the protection of the palm leaf. Essential elements for this ritual are a palm leaf or front, incense, cup of water.

Take your palm leaf outside on a sunny day. Cast your sacred circle. Light the incense and pass the palm leaf through the smoke, saying:

Solstice Melody

May the sweet breeze of summer
curl around your shoulders.
May the joyous sound of birdsong
fill your ears.
May the taste of wild berries
bless your lips.
May the energetic blooms
of the new and thriving
delight your gaze.
May the rich scents of roses
and wonder
fill your being.
May you lift your arms
to the sun and allow
yourself to expand into
the heart of passion,
the heat of longing,
the warmth of pleasure.
May the streaming light of
purposeful joy
replenish your heart.

Happy Solstice!