You Heathen!

Icelandic stave Veldismagn

As mentioned in a recent, ranty, "get off my lawn you kids" sort of post, I have a habit of sitting down and reevaluating my spirituality every decade or so (and woe to be old enough to measure these reevaluations in decades!) and generally realign my spirituality. I will never be one of those people who is comfortable practicing any sort of spirituality in a group setting, but I still seek virtual groups out not for camaraderie, but to quietly learn and slip away with the knowledge I was seeking out. Recently, I've been feeling that the word "shaman" fits my spirituality the best (although I'm not hung up on labels) so over the last few weeks I have been looking into modern shamanism (oh boy, so much fluff and woo) and dissatisfied with that search, started researching the Icelandic runic staves.

It's interesting, the rabbit holes you can fall into with a Google search. From Icelandic staves I went to Norse runes (the Elder Futhark) and somewhere along the way I stumbled upon Heathenry. A first, knee-jerk reaction was that Heathenry appealed to me very much. A second, knee-jerk reaction was "wow, there are a lot of racists who use a religion to justify racism." Apparently, it's a widespread problem, as several groups I've found online have, as rule number 1, "take your white supremacy and racism elsewhere." After looking into Heathenry on a superficial level, there is a theistic side to it, which doesn't quite work for me, but I'll continue to research and read, because knowledge is always valuable.

In the mean time, I'll continue to collect crow feathers and any clean bones/antlers and other magical items I can find/afford and spend time in nature. I'm too shamany for anything organized. Hopefully next summer I can make it to Iceland for a spiritual journey and to have Veldismagn tattooed on my chest (because believe it or not, 2 of my 3 current tattoos are spiritual for me, being my animal guide, the crow). Right now I'm looking for something way more primal and less organized, and I've realized that's a path I have to forge for myself.