The pendant is a piece of antler maybe two inches long, sanded smooth and drilled so that a chain can pass through, leaving it to hang along my sternum. The only ornament to it is a small wood-burned Elhaz, faded from years of thoughtful rubbing as I go about my day. The rune, I’m told, means either a sharp and unpleasant sort of grass or else simply “elk” – in which case, carrying it on an antler tine has always seemed fitting.
This was the first symbol I was taught for protection, and this pendant has rested against my skin in times I felt the need for something solid to guard me. It was a gift at a Yule ritual, and according to the packing slip and the order form it should have said Ansuz. Yule rituals in my circle are always dedicated to Odin, after all, the god of breath who owns that rune, but I had been delighted at the mistake. It came at a moment when I needed something more solid, and I was thankful to Freyr. I associated him with all things cervine and assumed the substitution was his doing.
It was my lynchpin of protection for months, until it discolored from the oils in my skin and the chain I put it on. Then it sat on my altar, a still and constant piece of the web I made of my life. I thought of it as vital, associated it more with the ice-cold protection of winter. As other challenges came up and I managed my protections differently, I thought of it less.
This is why I tend my altars so often: things change. I have a tendency to forget things that I do not put my hands on occasionally. Today I am holding the pendant, heating a wood burner so that I can redraw the rune. It is a little heavier than I remember it, a little less vibrant. There is no place for it in the new way I have designed the pattern of trinkets and oddities that center me in my home.
Nothing that’s alive holds still, I remind myself. This happens sometimes, either with items moving from altar to altar as my understanding changes or going into a bin of gifts that need to find recipients. It’s a sign that my practice is thriving, growing past its confines. Still, it’s a little sad to hold something that was once so important and wonder if it’s even mine anymore.
Candles burning on a twilit altar [Pixabay]
This, like everything about my altars, is a metaphor. There is nothing inherently holy about a small plastic pig, a piece of rock crystal, or an intricately carved staff. I think of my altars as outward expressions of my relationships with the spirits. Some are great sprawling things filled with trinkets. Others are a few items, almost restrained, sitting in the corner of a shelf. They shift and change and, sometimes, they fade away.
Having a relationship fade is difficult enough in the language of irregular phone calls and unanswered texts. Watching the same thing happen beneath your hands – shelves undusted and forgotten, flowers fading and going unreplaced, water drying in its bowl to leave only crust – leaves very little room to pretend. Is it time, I wonder, scrubbing a crust of incense out of a disused burner. Have we grown too far apart? Do I have the energy and the interest in re-investing, reaching out again to try and connect? Or does it just need time to germinate and lay quiet before another burst of growth?
Like most things about the gods, this both is and is not a metaphor. There have been a lot of irregular phone calls in the last few years, a lot of dinners scheduled and canceled and never rescheduled. The connections that were vibrant enough to survive are great sprawling things now, forged in difficulty. They take up whole shelves of my life. How much energy do I have for the ones that have grown dusty and distant? How can I be sure when it is time to take one apart, rather than setting it aside and waiting for it to flourish again?
Tealights burning in the dark [Pixabay]
I have been drafting an oath for months, fiddling with the wording, leaving it until I’ve forgotten the pattern of it, returning again with new eyes. With my Heathen background, I think of oaths as promises woven into the fate of everyone involved. They’re huge and heavy, and breaking one can damage the core of both the oathbreaker and the community.
That’s daunting when it’s a promise between humans, but even the most serious of our vows tends to have a clause written in that ends it with death. I am oathing to – building a relationship with – someone, who, if he experiences death, comes at it from a decidedly more metaphysical perspective. I have written and rewritten it, wondering what I can promise on that kind of scale.
My affection? But I do not always feel affectionate, and cannot promise it will remain steady.
My devotion? But that waxes and wanes.
Myself? But the self I am today isn’t the same person as I will be in a year, much less seven, much less in whatever comes after this life.
His altar, right now, is massive and well-tended, cluttered with offerings and small treasures that make me think of him. I touch it in the morning and again at night – and there is a small fear inside me that someday this will be nothing but habit, another shelf in my house with no meaning. I mean to bind myself to him forever. But what if, someday, I take his statues down and roll up his tapestries?
This is the problem with loving someone immortal. They have a much better idea of what I’m getting into than I do. This isn’t to say that I think the gods are constant and unerring in their relationships. Myths aside, I know too many people who have quarreled with a god or balked at their requests to think that spirits have perfect understandings of the multifaceted and ever changing terrain of love. What they have, if anything, is aeons more experience in relationships – both good and bad, romantic and familial.
As I get older, that scale means more to me. I approach my life with more nuance and care than I did a decade ago. I listen to my partners more closely, I have more empathy and understanding to offer them in our disagreements. Is that process of growth inherently human – and if not, what does it mean, writ out in centuries? What do they promise, when they come into their relationships? How do they continue to build connections with people, when we can promise so little on their scale of things?
I want to give my beloved everything that I have. Sometimes, it feels as though that’s not very much at all. But I know I can promise one thing: to come back to the altar. I can promise to pick up the stones and the pendants, to light the candles and burn the incense. On long days, I can rest my head against the wood and share my weariness. I can return again and again, and listen to the sense inside of me, and take note of what feels alive, what is still important to me. I can build the altar continually, and I can be honest about what fits, still, what needs to change, what I need to let go.
Like everything about my altars, this is a metaphor.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.