The ritual use of the sense of smell can include literally stopping to smell the roses. A pause on one's way, appreciating a flower, a whisper of "Hail Freya" as one sniffs, this is a ritual. Rituals do not have to be elaborate. One can plant specific plants to honor particular god, or ancestor, or other being. If the nature of the plant includes fragrance, the smelling of the plant scent can be incorporated into ritual. I have a pink rose in my garden and when I smell it I honor Freya. Roses are usually Freya flowers but I also have one specific rose bush that is for Sigyn due to my personal ..read more

My Monster Powers journey continues. I started weaving a small tapestry in honor of the Gila Monster. I've been participating in the forum on the website my brother introduced me to. I'm not only learning a lot but also coming to consider new ways of thinking about perfumes. Of course I'm already familiar with the idea of honoring certain powers and gods at certain times. I've been honoring day of the week specific powers on their days using perfumes. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, part of my morning ritual is to stand at the main house altar and apply the appropriate perfumes from the Asatr ..read more

Today we're exploring the senses other than taste. In Asatru and heathenry, the most common sacrifice is sumbel, that is, making a toast. The person honoring the god or other power drinks the beverage, so the person is experiencing and consuming the thing given to the god. Other sacrifices work the same way. For example, an offering of dance is the person giving the offering doing the dance. A person burning a special candle experiences the light and scent. And so on. As mentioned in Part 1, I wanted to find ways of honoring the gods and powers other than by eating and drinking because as part ..read more

Spoiler: this is sad, but don't worry, the kitten is ok and so is my adult cat. I started writing this post when I was feeling ecstatic over adopting a new kitten. I'll leave what I wrote unedited and then there will be more under the heading THE REST OF THE STORY Storm the kitten. Also called Stormy, Stormy Kitty, Kitten of Mass Destruction, Entbane, Breaker of Trees. Yes, as soon as he was named, he lived up to his name by breaking a tree. A little one. The mimosa tree seedling I wrote about on this blog, sadly. My second chance seedling. All the mimosa tree seedlings are gone now. I spoke ..read more

Typical Asatru holiday rituals involve toasts. Many holiday celebrations include feasts as part of the holiday. There lies before us a whole world of senses to explore besides taste, though. There are of course also many actions beyond the sensory and beyond simply giving a thing, and I'll get to those in a future part of this series, but first I want to focus on the senses other than taste. This will be a multi part series, starting with this overview which includes a section on: why now in my personal journey. I'll review some terms, and then get to the senses other than taste: hearing, sigh ..read more

I'm doing more rune readings now. I've evolved my rune casting techniques over the years, and am now doing them more intuitively than I did before. I have a stronger connection to Odin now than I did before. Also, long time readers may recall that I received a new rune set that I felt was going to help me connect more with female ancestral power when I read the runes. It worked out great and has really made my readings more smoothly intuitive. For years now, I've taught rune classes, read runes for charity at Pagan Pride Day fundraisers, and did the occasional rune casting for people in my so ..read more

American Halloween and Pagan Samhain are very different holidays. Neither are Asatru, or heathen, but because they are celebrated by the wider local community, this year I celebrated both. My experiences at the Samhain Soiree appear second in this post, after the link to an American Halloween celebration for those who wish to have one. American Halloween is a fine community tradition. My street does it all together as a street fair, which we started doing in 2020 so we could move Halloween outside for safety, but we kept doing it because it was more fun this way. American Celebration Kindred d ..read more

Since this is Gnosis Diary I've gotta tell you about gnosis once in a while. My autumn gnosis experience was about cats. Remember my cat Happy had told me he wanted to return to Earth and I would know which one. Well I was scrolling through the Sin City Witches social media group and a member posted she had kittens to give away. There was a blurry photo of a tiny black fuzzball reaching claws toward the camera. I heard Happy tell me that was him. I contacted the kitten lady, and my housemate. But then shortly he told me it wasn't really him. He had actually changed his mind and decided to stay ..read more

One day I was doing normal house stuff and my Honir ring broke.  First, some background. As longtime readers of this blog might remember, my actual godspouse wedding rings that I received during my 2 marriage ceremonies exist on the spiritual level, not in the physical realm, but I had 3 rings dedicated to my 3 god-husbands, and 1 of them was the one I accidentally used in my 3rd marriage ceremony which I didn't realize I had done until afterwards. All 3 of the rings were ones I already had. The first one was for Loki, and it was a ring my dad had made. Dad cut stones as a hobby. The Loki ..read more

Monsoon season in the Vegas valley closed out August with a wonderful thunderstorm during my pool party. The week leading up to it had been lovely and still enough for me to manage to get the pool looking nice and clean, always a challenge when a giant pine tree hangs over it. The pool party started with hot, still weather and a few puffy clouds in the sky, as neighbors and friends trickled in through the open side gate. I was super excited by the surprise appearance of friends from out of town I hadn't seen in years. The clouds kept gathering and turned gray and we were all looking at the sky ..read more