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Misconceptions about seidhr (pronounced “seethe” or “sayth”), Norse trance journeying, abound in both the lore and Heathenry−much of it hinging on modern fantasies or medieval corruptions and loaded with sexual politics that have no real place in approaching our elder kin. This creates fear, distrust and distance from the Gods and ancestors where there should be real affection, truth and learning instead.

It’s time to change that.

I've been thinking a lot about Fate lately, what with all the crazy things going on in the Big World. Fate has always been a focal point for people's thoughts, and the Fate goddesses of the ancient pantheons have a lot to teach us. What I didn't realize until I had been in relationship with the Minoan deities for some time is that there is a Minoan Fate goddess. You may know her as Ariadne.

My first clue that Ariadne is a Fate goddess should, in retrospect, have been obvious: She has a thread. That's my picture of her up top, the Fate (Wheel of Fortune) card from my Minoan Tarot deck. In the Greek version of Ariadne's story, which dates to almost a millennium after Minoan times, Ariadne is just a girl who uses a ball of string to aid the strapping hero Theseus. But really, she's much more than that.

Title: Romancing the Null (The Outlier Prophecies Book One)

Call it luck.

One spring I planted the garden with old seeds. Many of them never germinated. No kohlrabi, no beets, no acorn squash.

Oh well, I thought. That's luck.

One morning that fall I happened to remark to Craig, Some acorn squash would taste good right about now.

Sure enough. That afternoon, interlaced among the tangle of the tomato plants, I found the vine, sprung up all unbeknownst.

With one perfect, perfectly ripe, acorn squash.

My first response was laughter.

Robert Cochrane (1931-1966), father of the contemporary Old Craft movement, was wont to say that the true name of the witch goddess is Fate (Cochrane 25). Yet he writes to Joseph Wilson in 1966 that the “prime duty of the Wise” is to “overcome fate” (Cochrane 23).

What is one to make of this?

Permit me to draw on the traditional vocabulary of the Elder Witcheries and to reframe the discussion in terms of “Wyrd.” Wyrd was anciently seen both as a goddess and as the inherent pattern of things: what Is, the sum total of everything that has happened until now, and the cumulative momentum towards the future inherent in that pattern. In the most abstract sense, one could say that the witches' goddess is Being, as the witches' god is Duration: in effect, Mother Nature and Father Time.

In the corpus of Latvian dainas—folksongs—no goddess is mentioned more often than Laima: Fate, Moira, Wyrd. Everyone acknowledges that she's the most powerful of them all. In some dainas she's said to be more powerful even than Dievs (Heaven/God) himself, but in the poems nonetheless she's generally addressed in the most intimate and personal terms: “my Laima,” “my dear Laima,” “dearest Laima,” the folksongs say. Euphemism perhaps, but what is closer than one's own wyrd?

Robert Cochrane once wrote that the true Goddess of Witches is Fate. In the raksti, the traditional symbol-motifs of Latvian folk art, Laima's symbol is the broom. In the end, she sweeps everything before her.

When translating dainas, I always aim for a poem that sounds as if it could have been written originally in English; hence my choice of “Wyrd” over “Laima” or “Fate”: translating one heathenry with another.