Gnosis Diary: Life as a Heathen
My personal experiences, including religious and spiritual experiences, community interaction, general heathenry, and modern life on my heathen path, which is Asatru.
My Monster Powers December 2024
The dark and cold of the Winter Solstice is traditionally cheered up with fire and food. "Good cheer" is used to mean the company of friends and family, holiday foods, and especially holiday drinks. Mulled, spiced apple cider is also called wassail, which is also the name of a custom of a group of people singing to the apple trees, similar to caroling but singing to trees instead of going around to different houses singing to people.
I still want good cheer at this time of year, but, I started out the month trusting and hoping that I will have my new Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) back in time for the holidays-- I had been off my monster medicine since before Thanksgiving due to a "pre-authorization" issue, but hoped to be back on it by Yule-- so I was planning to have my cheer with perfume and other sensory pleasures. I will still have some food and drink too, but it is going to be a small part of my celebration rather than the main focus.
As readers of my blog may remember, in November I wrote a free verse about pre-selecting perfumes for December:
My December
Oranges
Fire
Gourmands
Ice / snow
Fading florals—
(keep them alive)
Honor the sun
--and the dark
Here are my perfume selections for each line of my free verse:
Mandarin Oranges: Chanel Allure
Fire: By the Fireplace, Midnight Bonfire
Gourmands: Feve Gourmand, Vanilla Park, Jolly Gingerbread Village, Twisted Peppermint, Fig Tea by Parfums de Nicolai, Coffee White Flowers, Ristretto Intense Cafe, Pumpkin Pie by Demeter, Dark by Akro
Ice/ Snow: Silver Mountain Water, Artik Sea
Fading Florals: Covered in Roses by Bath & Body Works
Keep them alive: Brightest Bloom, L’Heure Bleu
Honor the Sun: Golden Hour, Guess Gold
And the dark: Midnight Stroll, Midnight Amber Glow, Midnight Bonfire
I mixed some of my own fragrances, including soap, lotion, body mists, etc., over the Thanksgiving holiday while I had the kitchen to myself while my housemate was with her family. One of them was Midnight Bonfire, which features cade oil, smoke accord, and apple cinnamon cider. I couldn't decide whether to put that in the fire category or the dark category, so I put it in both.
For the Sun, I didn’t want to choose the same 2 perfumes I choose for Sunday (Melody of the Sun and Grain de Soleil) so instead I’m choosing my own scent Golden Hour, which also goes for oranges (I extracted an orange extrait from real orange peels; I ate the orange.) I also choose other gold things, although of course I’m aware the sun is actually white, not yellow. Symbolically gold and yellow are sun colors. So I choose Guess Gold lotion, which doesn’t have a scent other than metallic but has fine gold glitter in it. Gold glitter can also honor Freya. I will honor both Freya in her solar aspect, the aspect in which she appeared to me during my self initiation. I will also honor Sunna of course. I can do both.
As I was getting everything off of my November tray on the evening before the first day of December, I thought that I had not worn some of my November selections enough because of doing so much sampling and doing the mixing and soap making project. So I put on a lot of my November selections that evening. First I wore Coffee White Flowers, and then when that started to fade, I put on Ambre Precieux and Deep Ocean Amber at the same time-- I have learned that is called layering-- and then when I picked up the decant sprayer of Wet Garden by Demeter I realized I only had one portion left. That is one of the hazards of getting sample vials and decants via trades and from decanting companies, there is not much of each one. So I went ahead and sprayed on that one too even though it didn't seem like it would go with the other ones. It was fine, it didn't clash. I think I can relax a bit about "unintentional layering" it's fine, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, I don't need to make a big thing about it.
When I started my December tray, I only had one perfume with an orange note, a sample of Allure. I got 2 more in samples, Chocolat by Il Profumo, and La Nuit de Boheme by Anna Sui. I got a xmas orange and another xmas orange! And xmas oranges appeared in my Misfits Market box although I didn’t order them. I must have been good. (I also got an apple brandy on the rocks. In my defense, Loki encouraged me.)
Even though the base extrait of the Erin's Garden Collection is made of things I grew in my garden, a lot of the fragrance ingredients I was working with were purchased. I was using some of the equipment I used to use to make Northern Lights Goddesses Brew. I had given up making my whiskey blend because it had become too physically difficult for me to harvest and process the wheat by hand. But one morning as I was sipping my morning coffee I looked at my Memories thingy on Facebook and there was a photo of a bottle of Northern Lights Goddesses Brew, and I realized, what made that a goddesses brew and not just a home grown whiskey was all the herbal ingredients I blended in to honor specific goddesses, and most of those were purchased ingredients. I could just buy whiskey to blend. Lots of makers of alcohol buy their ingredients and blend them to get their special thing, and I could do the same. I could make Northern Lights Goddesses Brew again. It would just be a blend of purchased ingredients.
For a while after my joyous success at losing 10 lbs. in 1 month, I was off of the medicine. My dr. appt at which I did my weigh in and got my rx renewed was the day before I was supposed to inject again, but the insurance company requires preauthorization and it was a Friday and the next week the pharmacy was closed for Thanksgiving and then I don't know what was up the week after that. But I was starting to be concerned about losing my progress and my powers. I kept weaving the Gila Monster tapestry. One day I was worrying about not having my medicine and the Gila Monster came to me in my mind and blessed me. So I still have the Gila Monster's blessing even when I'm not on the Gila Lizard Powers drug. I was greatly relieved.
Soon after that I had to go shop for a non food item and went to a grocery store I rarely visit. I escaped without buying any extra things and I didn't even want any of the foods. I literally just looked at them and didn't want them. And I wasn't even on the medicine. A couple of doors down there was a beauty and perfume store. I went in a tried several of the testers. I didn't buy anything there either but I did find something I wanted very much. (I added it to my list of things I'd like to get for a present. My brother might buy me something like that.) In the car I took notes and kept smelling my arms. I drank in the perfumes as I might have drunk an actual drink in another part of my life.
I continued to search for a Tyr and Zisa honoring perfume for Tuesday that would have pine, preferably stone pine, and sea notes. I tried Cliffside Bonfire by Solstice Scents. It didn't quite do it for me. I continued my search with some samples from Pineward. The samples I was interested in were Borealis and Icefall, because they had both pine and sea related notes. Samples were not available individually so I ordered the Winter 2024 discovery set which had both of those perfumes in it. I decided on Icefall as my Tuesday perfume. I kept a few of the others and the rest of the samples went on my Samples for Swap shelf.
I hosted the Bardic Circle at Lokifest, an online convention. See my Lokifest 2024 Report for my impressions.
On the Fragrantica forums there was a thread about eclectic style. It united eclectic ideas about fashion and perfume. A bit downthread I mentioned some of my eclectic fashion choices and mentioned my mini crazy quilt hair barrettes. Someone was interested in seeing pictures and we got to discussing that and this flowed out of my hands:
One of the reasons I liked to make little crazy quilts is because they are a celebration of chaos on a structural level. They're named after "crazing," the pattern of tiny breaks in aged porcelain. They're random, and yet form a pattern.
I'm drawn to that emergent order. Like the moment the universe coalesced and started making stars.
xxx
I tested a sample of Linden cologne by the perfume house Demeter. I was thinking I might honor Frigga with it, but she spoke in my mind and told me that the reason I had originally given her linden flower tea was because it was the only flower tea I had in my cupboard that was not already dedicated to Freya (rose) or Sigyn (lavender.) Any flower is OK, any tea is OK. She told me she would rather have me toast her with black tea, and only when I was already having tea. She liked my custom of having afternoon tea with the people living here or with my friends, but I don't need to give her something every day. What she really wants from me is for me to continue to do fiber arts regularly.
xxx
I have a perfume comment that was prompted by Lokifest but I'm putting it here because it's not actually about Lokifest, it's about me missing part of Lokifest. I didn't tune into the closing ritual until it was over. I felt the need to still have a closing just for me. So first I checked the discord to see if people had liked my cat pic, which they had, of course. Then I announced out loud that Lokifest was over. Even though I was the only human in the room I still said it out loud. Then I did a brief "bad vibes away, go, become light," and cast any bad vibes from tech glitches or whatever toward the light the comes from the Luxor a few miles away, as is my custom. I had a travel spray of Salt Air on my desk and thought, well why not, it's salt. I sprayed the Salt Air toward the computer and then put my head into the scent cloud. I felt that actually worked to get rid of any lingering technical or other bad vibes. I would not have thought to do that at the end of a festival except my housemate and I had had bad vibes after in person pagan events and had had to clear those, so I figured I should do the same with this even though it was online. I don't know if Salt Air even has any actual salt in it. It kind of just smells sweet, not like the sea, so I don't know. But it seemed to work anyway.
xxx
Through all this, I was not actually on the medicine. I had been on it for 2 months, and needed a new prescription each month, and for the third month the insurance company failed to "preauthorize" my prescription. At around the 2 week mark I went to the dr.'s office in person to ask them to get on that preauthorizing. (It's impossible to get anything done over the phone, I can leave an answering machine message but usually only front desk stuff like making appointments generates a return phone call, doing any prescription stuff on the phone is useless.) So I ended up just leaving a message with the front desk person instead of on an answering machine, but at least I know someone heard me, it didn't just go into a digital oubliette.
I kept honoring the Gila Monster by weaving a Gila Monster tapestry. By the third week off of the medicine, I no longer really had any Monster Powers, but I still felt I had been helped in lasting way.
On the negative side, I tried to do well with my diet, but of course I was back on my old medicine that I still had around the house, which often caused low blood sugar emergencies, so sometimes I had to consume carbs rapidly for rescue when I didn't even want to eat anything. Usually that meant drinking juice or soda, although I could also use glucose tablets. And of course because I knew that could happen and I knew it was especially dangerous to have a low blood sugar emergency while swimming or driving or getting up on a ladder, that caused me to pre-emptively consume carbs just before doing any of those things. That's the same thing that had been happening for years and was one reason why it was so hard to lose weight.
But on the positive side, those 2 months when I did have Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) was enough time to interrupt old habits and form new ones. I had spent a lot of time thinking about food, planning what to eat, getting the best bargains, planning perfectly balanced meals, and cooking things. I had gotten into that habit for some very good reasons: I have a lot of allergies and it's really not safe for me to just eat restaurant food or pre-packaged meals even if I could afford it. Plus I have been low income most of my life and even when I wasn't, I was raised to be extremely frugal. Bargain hunting was a type of sport that I could be proud of. My friends and family all liked my cooking, and so did I. But when I had my Monster Powers, the first 2 days after my weekly injection I struggled just to drink enough water and get enough electrolytes. I didn't want any real meals except on days 6 and 7, so on days 3, 4, and 5, I tried to eat proteins and electrolytes, and tried some of my housemate's Atkins shakes. I decided those counted as food. I bought my favorite flavors by the case off of Amazon and started only paying enough attention to food to make a Sunday dinner and the rest of the time I had not real food. It freed up an incredible amount of my time and attention. And it saved a ton of money too, which I did not expect. I thought packaged meal shakes would end up being super expensive but buying enough ingredients to make real meals from scratch is actually more expensive. I didn't realize it because I had grown up thinking of farm produce as free, which it most certainly is not for me right now since I live in a city.
I still wanted delicious flavors, of course. But a lot of them came in the form of perfume. During the 2 months when I had my Monster Powers, as you know I became obsessed with perfume. What I may not have fully expressed is the degree to which my brain can't tell the difference between flavor and scent. When I talk about perfume notes I find myself using the term flavor most of the time, even when talking about fragrances that are not considered gourmands. When I lost access to the monster medicine I was afraid I would go back to needing actual food to satisfy my desire for deliciousness. But it turns out, I can still use perfumes for that purpose. When I wanted the taste of pumpkin pie I wanted to go spray on Pumpkin Pie cologne by Demeter, not make and eat actual pumpkin custard. (Which is awesome, because now I'm allergic to eggs so I couldn't eat any pumpkin custard even if I made some. Some of my food allergies are mild but the egg one is not.) The money I have saved by not continually shopping for enough different ingredients to keep making complete home made meals, and especially the money I saved by not hosting Thanksgiving this year, I used to buy perfume. And I used perfume to substitute for food. So I kept eating less even without the medicine.
At first it felt odd and extravagant and I kept feeling like I was going to get caught buying and using something that was not necessary for survival and get in some sort of trouble. I had mentally put shopping for, growing, cooking, and eating food in the "necessary" category and allowed myself to be creative and luxurious with food because I had to eat food anyway, and had cut myself off from a lot of other types of sensory pleasures as not "necessary." I had had some scented soaps and lotions because I had put those in the "necessary" category too, but not actual perfumes, just the "necessities." So it was a radical reorganization of my thought patterns and habits to cut back on food, a necessity, and replace it with perfume, an unnecessary luxury.
But the Gila Monster showed me that perfume IS a necessity for me. I need it. Perfume is the way I can lose weight and get in control of my diabetes and improve my health, and all of those things are absolutely necessary. If I could just buy my medicine I would, but that's not the way that works. However, I can buy perfume. I can devote the bargain hunting attention I used to devote to getting deals on food to getting deals on perfume. Using the Fragrantica site, I can discover which notes cause allergy or other bad reactions, and seek out ones without those ingredients. I can find out which things I like, and try to find things I like cheaply, and talk about perfumes with other fragrance afficionadoes, and swap with them to trade samples I didn't like for other samples that I might enjoy. I have not only subtituted perfume for food, I have also subsituted a relaxing old fashioned forum site for the frustrating and anger-inducing experience of social media. I completely stopped reading Xitter, formerly known as Twitter. I cut way down on Facebook. I spend less time online and more time doing active things, including making my own perfumes and perfumed products. I did not go back to Xitter when I ran out of the medicine; I was out of the habit of looking at it and didn't miss it. I did not go back to planning more than 1 or 2 full meals each week either. I was so relieved to have so much time, energy, and money for other things. I have kept the new habits the Gila Monster helped me develop, and I hope I keep them up for life.
As Yule approached and I had still not planned our Yule party because I was waiting for another group to pick their date, I realized: the other group has some heathens but it's mostly a renfaire group. I haven't even been to the renfaire in a couple of years. Their Yule party is feasting, drinking toasts around a bonfire outside at night, wearing our historical garb. None of that is me anymore. Renfaire? No. Staying up late? No. Feasting? No. Drinking? No. It doesn't even sound fun anymore. There is a present exchange but what I had chosen and wrapped wouldn't work because I was reminded it was supposed to be limited to no more than a $20 value. I had nothing that would work, even my hand made molded soaps go for more than that. I would have to give the wrapped thing to someone else, at my own Yule party. I could go there just to see people I know but I could do that by going to one of their practice events in the nearby park and then I'd be able to actually just chat with people, which doesn't really work at a highly scheduled event like the Yule party until all the activities are done, late at night after I want to go to sleep. I realized I would actually prefer to not go and just catch up with them at one of their more low-key, less scheduled events.
I held my own Yule party, but none of the kindred members showed up except for Margaret, who is the daughter of my best friend and therefore would have been there anyway. Her parents are neither heathen nor pagan, and she only became pagan recently. My neighbors did come though. So, there was only one heathen there, me, and 2 pagans, Margaret and my housemate. I decided to go very low key with the heathen ritual and only made one toast, "Good Yule!" with coffee, and did not do a formal blessing. There was a pine branch though, because my neighbors brought a bouquet and it had a pine branch in it. The main ritual event of Yule is exchanging presents, and it is both perfectly heathen and also perfectly non-denominational, in the way that I described in my book American Celebration. I had named the kindred American Celebration Kindred precisely because I had always wanted to be able to celebrate holidays with the people who are important in my life regardless of their religion or atheism. I was back to doing mostly American style holidays and it was wonderful.
I realize now that I had gone full tilt with the heathen ritual for a few years after my mom died and after the extreme loneliness of 2020 because I could and I needed that right at that point in my life but I also realize that my usual American style holidays are really more me and more what I generally want and need in my life right now. At some point I will still want to do a full ritual of some type with the garb and the tools and the drinking and the fire and all that but not every time or even every year probably. I have always been able to reach the gods more easily when I'm alone with them. Rituals with other people are for building community and friendship with other people.
On the 23rd of December I got my powers back. Some chain of actions involving my doctor's office, the insurance company, the pharmacy, manufacturers, and transportation all came together so that I could pick up my Gila Lizard Powers medicine. The Gila Monster came to me and its power went throughout my body.
That evening my brother called me and I told him, "I got my powers back!"
He asked me what my powers are.
I told him, "I can very slowly change my shape."
He laughed and said, "verrrryyy ssllllowwlllyyy."
Of course the Gila Monster powers are not only for weight loss; I'm diabetic and this medicine moderates the wide swings of my blood sugar so they are not as wide. Other diabetes medicines just lower blood sugar, which means when I'm on those I can't just be "normal," I crash through normal on my way to emergency. On other medicines, I don't dare push my blood sugar level too low or I could die. On this one, my blood sugar naturally hovers around the "normal" range and doesn't swing as much. My Gila Lizard Powers are the powers of healing all the little processes in my body that I didn't even know needed or could be healed.
I'm getting memories back. My senses are getting sharper. I'm writing this on the evening of the 23rd and I don't know what is coming next but I know it will be wonderful. My body is changing and it is amazing.
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