Ehwaz, Mannaz- The Self, and the Work

For this week’s runic contemplation of Ehwaz and Mannaz, let’s talk about the ‘Self’, and also about our work socially, and how they walk hand in hand.  

For most of my adult life I’ve spent my time surrounded by lots of people. I’d travel from festival to festival, tea table to tea table, art community to art community.  I lived in many nodal centers and public places like temples, ashrams, and intentional commmunities .

Following the muse, traveling from here to there, I learned about myself through the mirror of the other. And also simultaneously slowly, slowly…slowly…I got to a place where I’d be surrounded by people and yet also felt very very alone. 

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I realize I’ve been burned in this life and others.

I’m still healing these wounds as I write.  

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 Still in the process of grieving.

I’m learning that grief is empowered by the love we feel. So i think that I’d be there in the village, surrounded by so much community love, and it would shine a beam into the pain that I’d feel. And then I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

And I’d feel this pain of separation. It’s so old. It feels like a past life memory. Of when the ancestors left their homeland. Of when the church finally beat the last hope for the old gods from our hearts. When the food and the village got destroyed. When the ancestors lost their minds to addiction and running and colonizing. 

I long to return home to village and to tribe. To be appreciated, trusted, and acknowledged. But first I have to re-learn new ways to make my offerings of appreciation, care, and support for others in an interdependent way.  

To unlearn codependencty. To stop people pleasing. To remember that we all stand our own ground. We’re all rooted to the same one universal mind. When we find that taproot, our communities become a stand of aspen trees, our roots interconnected by miles of mycelium. 

From those wounds of separation, we reweave the connection, and return back to balance. 

I’m dedicated to reweaving culture with my work.

Archaic Revival Winter Soulstice Ritual, 2019 At Tryon Life Farm, Portland Oregon.

In our works with Archaic Revival Ritual Collective, we rewove the mythos of the pagan Yule into a modern Portland activity in a wonderful Winter Soulstice Ritual at Tryon Farm in 2019. We gracefully slipped the old ways into the new ones and relit a flame of ancestral pagan inspiration. 

And through the mirror of this ritual, Samantha Connell from Washington was inspired by what she experienced that day to do the same thing, as this has been the way since the beginning of time.

They even included the same rainbows that we had!!!

Seeing into the future, the myriad ways this one simple ritual has fractalized to become so many circles upon circles. 

I’m celebrating and healing my copycat allergy

Through belief work, I’m letting the love in. 

I’m finally excited when I sense someone is inspired by my work.  

Where there is piracy I do my best  to communicate loving boundaries. When it comes to how to balance the realms of maintaining ‘creative control’ in a world rampant with psychic vampirism, I call upon my trusted support team to help remind me to focus inward on my aim with diligence.

I accept and release the inevitable drama that arises with reviving an ancestral way that was intended to be eradicated for centuries and centuries.

This line of work comes with these hurdles to bear. It’s an ancient world full of ghosts and sleeping powers. One must  be willing to remain dedicated to what moves them intuitively and creatively without the fear of how it will affect one socially.  Most  great works I’ve done has also come with drama, falling outs, and conflicts afterward over whom the power we cultivate belongs to.

When I was younger I led an elaborate ritual in the Lucidity Festival Jaguar Goddess Temple with Seven Hathor Priestesses, Indigenous Elders, and 5 Sound Healers for a 3 hour Libation offering. I wish I had photos still. It was so epic. So many people came. Hundreds.

It was a lot. And I was ON ONE! haha.  

My partner at the time Zin laughed at me as my messy bun was flapping in the wind talking at top speed while i complained about who knows what petty ego trip I was facing at the time. All the different projections of what it meant to be in ceremonial space. The leaky boundaries and strange soul contracts. Yet also the extreme beauty of the memory and the success of the workings being done to continue to maintain the archetypal Goddess Temple Culture.

I’ve learned that when you’re HP,(High Priestess) , you’ve gotta be a Dragon Rider. 

The dragon that guards the shadow of this work is ferocious. But when we make friends with their monstrous gaze, we get free.

Cuz a HP has to face not only the ego projection and shadow purges of their congregation and community but also their our OWN shadow that surfaces in the ritual’s mirroring that needs tending to. I’ve witnessed it so many times. In my own work and with my colleagues.

Still, sometimes when we’re not careful we’ll find ourselves physcially and mentally ill and knee deep in drama swamps instead of sovereign on the throne doing our work with sustainability and grace. I know past lives have influenced this. And we’re still remembering key tools like sound to anchor vibrations so that we can stay attuned WHEN the otherside of the coin reveals itself within our magickal workings. 

 In ancient temples, we’d return the power generated to the Goddess again and again, and keep a small portion for ourselves as conduits. Goddess Temples were the homes of the grain and the produce and the wealth of the land. 

But now, in a commodified world, where plastic friendships are leveraged for social climbing and glittery surface networking opportunities,  a true friend is gold and few and far between.

So I cherish those who weren’t scared when we sat in the ancient powers together.

Who respond with smiles of curiosity and with reinforcement when the inevitable shadowshit arises in the work so we can lean in. 

Those allies who share power with acknowledgement, respect, and consent. 

I learned this truth from a wise woman once- 

A lot of people who I make art with, are not really your friend. And that’s okay. We’re all here to live our purpose, and once in awhile share tea, but mostly spend time alone with the powers working on our craft. Developing our music, or training for dance, or meditating, which requires turning inward at the vast expanse of one’s consciousness to explore. . 

And when we focus on this craft with all of our hearts, rather than focusing on seeking an easy out from some external source, the treasure we find will inevitably unfolds from upon itself to reveal the desire for service.

I think of the artist hermits I’ve known in my life an how wonderfully important they are. And they don’t show up at all the cool parties to take selfies, shake hands, and kiss babies. 

They’re at home. Painting meticulously. Or making beats. Or writing a story. Or inventing a system. Or organizing the resistance. Or gardening in the greenhouse. Or taking a nap with their husband. Or meditating at the lake. 

And then people are like ‘Hey, Hermit! Will you bring your special powers down the hill and share them with the village? And they sigh, ‘Yes.’ 

And they do.

And then they go home, back onto the hill. 

Maybe I’m supposed to be that lady who lives alone on the hill. 

Maybe I’m not supposed to live in the middle of the village anymore. 

I’ve helped build and strike the village a thousand times. 

And I’m super down to come share my lantern light. 

But I’m no longer gonna spend my days in the middle of it. 

I’m gonna take time at the keyboard. 

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Every person that comes into our lives is a sacred mirror to our own being. Lately I’ve been listening to people talk and imagining they’re dreammaker speaking directly to me. Every time I see another succeed, instead of a fear based ego response I rejoice at OUR success. Especially if I’ve influenced them.  I give myself a pat on the back that my own dedication to self evolution has inspired others towards the same. 

What more could one ask for?

I’m lucky. 

Anyways, this week Im contemplating Ehwaz and Mannaz in the Elder Futhark. They do have a lot to do with Self and Other, Self Care and Community Care. You, and also Your Works. Which are so much more than YOU, but rather the relationship with the world that you cultivate. 

Your Ally and Resident HP,

EmRa