The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/personal-essay)
More than Heathenry itself, Loki was the lynchpin of my spirituality, the guiding star and supporting bedrock of my life. When I finally admitted that we were done, it wracked through me in wave after wave of tears. I had, I realized, grown too far from the person I had once been. I looked at my father’s gifts and I could no longer tolerate the cost.
Sköll had caught Sunna; Fvni Lusa had begun his meal; Apep’s gaze had overwhelmed mighty Ra. In town, the church bells tolled, sounding that it was two o’clock or the end of the world. My father complained that he couldn’t see the corona through his eclipse glasses, and I told him they weren’t useful anymore.
This is the first place that has been entirely mine, where every piece of art or display has been chosen because it represents something important to me, something that makes me happy. Trying to see it with another set of eyes feels distancing, like a particularly unpleasant magic trick. I suppose that’s fitting.
A coin marks a point in time in a way few other artifacts do. My bronze coin isn’t just a piece of metal with a Roman emperor’s face on it – it’s an artifact of his reign, a holdover from that era which testifies to what happened to that point and what might have happened if the contingencies of history had turned out differently.
“What are these pillars, Gramma? Why do they feel so strange?” She stopped on the sidewalk and looked at me over the top of her glasses and said, “You ask strange questions, Sheri Ann.”