Protection sigil

It was a hard time, yet I was able to make this protection sigil, although I had no proper tools. Then it has been blessed by the gods on Mother night. I wear or take it with me in my pocket or bag. I made some sigils for my beloved ones as well and they too are blessed by the Gods. Someone else asked me to make one, they did mean to pay even a lot, but I'm not sure I want to make sigils for other people...

Temporary altar for Yule

I'm living in a temporary home for a while, so I had to arrange a temporary altar to celebrate Yule this year. I still have many things closed in boxes. Here you are my temporary altar. 

Over it, there's a small image of Odin and you can see a copy of his spear...

What's most important is our intimate connection with the Gods.

Heil to the Aesir and the Vanir! Heil to the Gods and the Goddesses! Heil to Odin's spear and Thor's hammer! Heil to the mighty fecund earth!

                                                                    HEIL!

Cure for aged and/or wounded Vikings

(For European Vikings, not just for American cow boys!)

Are you an aged or/and wounded Viking, feeling you have become useless and your life has come to a bad no return point? In many cases you can find the remedy, whatever is your age, specially if you suffer from sport accidents or age disturbs that seem to be chronic. Just try the cure!

Healing and the so called healers

When I hear someone defining him/herself as a healer, I suddenly become suspicious. I immediately imagine someone getting a lot of money from desperate people in search of a good cure for themselves or for a dear relative. I imagine the so called healer giving strange mysterious and very expensive liquids and pills, that are no other than coloured sweetened water and useless herbs, promising the miracle of recovering after a long, expensive cure. Or rites with candles and so called magical formulas that have the only power to convince “the client” that they will work... if the client keeps on paying.

Sure, being myself a believer in the ancient gods, I know they can give anyone any power, included the power to heal, just if and when the gods want and if they think a person deserves the gift. There are runes that have that special power of healing, as well.

Nevertheless it's  not such an easy and spread gift from the gods to become a healer and, even though some one gets that power, the gods never give it to them just to earn money. Sure, in the universe, anything we get must have a counterpart, we must give something in exchange. So, if you get some recovering from a healer, (who has got the power from the gods, by all means, so at the end it's just the gods that have recovered you...) it's up to you to decide what you will give in exchange. You'll give something worthy to the healer and also something to the gods, according to what you can afford. The gods never ask you for more than you can give, they know it would be unfair.

.

 But, remember: IT'S NEVER THE HEALER THAT HAS TO ASK YOU FOR A GIFT IN EXCHANGE! NOR BEFORE OR LATER EITHER!!!!

A cure for free

I'd like to be able to heal people, but I'm still mostly a warrior, not just a healer, although I've been able to heal myself from certain physical troubles due to...battles and sport accidents and also to my much too unconscious brave behaviour in the past. How did I get over all that? No magical secret.

 Just changing a few things in my life. If you are an old or/and wounded Viking, feeling you have become useless and your life has come to a bad no return point, with pain all over your body, you can't bow your knees or your back, you suffer from arthrosis and much more...in many cases you can find the remedy, whatever is your age, specially if you suffer from sport accidents or age disturbs. Just try the cure. I GIVE YOU IT FOR FREE, AS A GIFT,  after having healed myself.

I'm not saying you are going to walk again if you are paralized, nor that you will be well again soon if you have terminal cancer, but in many cases you can recover or improve your health really a lot.

As I've already said, I'M NOT A HEALER, I'm only a female Viking artist warrior, who, at a certain time of my life, was so wounded to consider myself almost invalid...After following simple different rules, I've got over all what doctors couldn't put much remedy to than just thinking of filling me with poisonous drugs and suggesting me to walk with a stick and even to stop working...I didn't like it, but I had to accept it and it was so sad, bad, painful. 

Meanwhile I had made a few changes in my life, for completely different reasons than health. After a while, I realizeed they had led me to get my lost good health back to me!

Avoiding prejudices about food

Yes, I know. When speaking about food most people say the usual things. They are the usual spreadest issues. Habits and tradition about food are hard to fight against. 
You ARE NOT INTERESTED in recovering, then STOP READING here!!! 
You ARE, then free your mind from prejudices about food and keep on reading.

Recovering is quite simple. It's enough you stop eating every food coming from animals. No more dairies, eggs, meat (and fish either, which are, by all means, animals as well and I don't know why most people seem to think FISH  are just vegetables or minerals...)

Every food you put into your mouth and will come down your stomach, then absorbed from your intestine, then goes around your whole body must come from the vegetable kingdom. Fruit, greens, legumes, grains, seaweeds. I know,you may think it's very hard, but you are wrong. After the very first days or weeks you'll learn how simple it is. It's just matter of organizing your new life style and to learn how to put together the right different vegetable aliments. I'm not speaking about turning vegan because of animal loving. A real vegan for ethical reasons avoids also any kind of products coming from animals, like leather, furs, wool, silk, ivory and so on. Here it's not matter of loving animals, but it's just matter of health and recovering simply by food. You'll be vegan just as for the way of feeding yourself.
YOU CAN EVEN KEEP ON HUNTING AND FISHING, ONLY, DON'T EAT WHAT YOU KILL! 

The more you avoid to swallow animal food , the better your health will become. Don't listen to many doctors that say that's not good; they are intentionally ignorant or maybe they believe blindly in what they have learnt at university from other previous ignorant or in bad faith doctors. It's many people's interest that you, we all, are ill. Doctors, pharmaceutical industries, chemists, researchers, health centres, food dealers, butchers, dairy industries, supermarkets, farmers, and many others, they all live and earn from our diseases. Many of them don't want us to recover, they want to maintain  us in life just to cure us without ever healing us!

If you learn how to eat the enormous variety of vegetable food you have at your disposal, you'll see your health get better day after day. Naturally, like any kind of change in your alimentar habits, it can take some time to get used to it. You could have a few little problems if you change it suddenly, whatever are your new food habits. You must get used to it little by little. Do begin from eating a bit less meat, and substitute only a part of it with some vegetable food, legumes for instance. Then, if you are in a habit to eat two eggs for breakfast, just eat one and substitute the second egg with some cereals. Eat half cheese that you are used to, and eat some cooked salted and well favoured or spiced or smoked tofu (never eat just natural tofu that you could find tasting like paper!).

Then you can keep on and substitute, little by little, all the aliments coming from animals and you'll realize it is not such a big problem. Cook a rich soup or pie with rice an pees, or Italian pasta with beans, or cous-cous and French beans, or cook a mushrooms omelette using chickpeas flour instead of eggs, mixing eggs and flour just to start. There are many types of so called vegetable “milk” you can choose among: soja milk, rice milk, corn milk, almond milk, natural or sweetened, and soja yogourt, soja cream and ice cream and a lot more... You 'll find plenty of good tasting recipes, you'll find out how to make almost every vegetable dishes that taste quite alike the usual ones, but are healthier, on vegan cooking books and websites. 

Or you can ask me...

Just be careful to put often together both cereals and legumes, so you'll have all the proteins that you need. The only problem could be some lack of B12 Vitamin. We usually find it in roots and vegetables that grow down or near the soil, as it's due to some microorganisms that are driven away by washing. If you can grow vegetables yourself in a clean space and you can eat them without washing, it's very fine. Yet, in most cases we have to buy them in shops and then we must wash them well, so the B12 is washed away. In that case, you need to integrate it. You can buy B12 in pills, they usually are small pink ones that are sold in herbalist's shops, or natural food shops or at some chemists. A small bottle lasts for months, as you have to take just one pill a week (not every day like it's often written on the directions on the bottle!) by putting it under your tongue and letting it to be absorbed. That's enough.

There is also something you may wish to know if you have great problems with cartilages, like osteoarthritis or arthrosis. Maybe you are under treatment with glucosamine. Although I think that a vegan diet is enough to recover almost from all that kind of problems, I must hint at it by adding that I have tried it myself too.

You can wish to keep on taking glucosamine. Glucosamine helps articulations. Although it may be enough to adopt a vegan diet to recover from many problems, if you choose to keep on taking it, in that case, do avoid normal glucosamine and chondroitin that come from animal cartilages, usually sharks and shellfish.

They are good only apparently, but they are still from animals and may cause other health problems as allergic reactions or a possible worsening of asthma symptoms. Moreover, they cancel all the other good effects of a vegan diet. Thus choose a vegan glucosamine. It must be taken for at least three months. Then you can stop for a while if you see it has worked well. In case your cartilage problems are very bad, you can take it for very long period of time or repeat the treatment twice a year or more. If you take strong enforced type of vegan glucosamine containing other than corn, cellulose, Stearic Acid, Croscarmellose Sodium,Vegetable Stearate and Silica, be careful of the other ingredients. If it's enforced with Ginger or Cat's Claw, and you are also under anticoagulant or antiplatelet treatment, or immune inhibitors, ask your doctor!

I have experienced all that myself

How do I know it really works? Just living it myself. I began to walk on the recovering path completely unaware of it, although I had heard about the good effects of a vegan diet on health, I had listened to them just vaguely.
Maybe I must explain how come that I turned to a vegan diet.

I had been a young strong brave girl, educated from a hunter and fisher father. I was used to follow him when hunting since my childhood, although he didn't made me shoot animals in the forests, as he feared I could shoot on a human by mistake. He made me shoot to flying bottles and cans. I went fishing with him as well. I got used to pick and then pluck all the caught birds, to skin other game, to cut and clean the fish. In summer, we often spent our holidays in the country, where I was used to see chicken and rabbits or other animals killed to be bought, taken home, prepared, cooked  and eaten. I also saw many times cows and calves being slaughtered in the near slaughterhouse. I was not at all an impressionable girl. I got used to see animal blood flowing in the blood canal and all that kind of things. I heard the despaired moos of cattles trying to escape, but I considered all that as totally normal. Not that I was such a bad, cold, cruel girl, but I considered all that as an unavoidable part of life .

I must also add that I had been educated to be as boldest as possible, like sort of modern Viking warrior girl, proud of my ancestors. Knowing history, I did know Vikings were much farmers and traders, but also very skilled with weapons and often, al least a lot of them, also raider warriors and pirates. Although I'm very proud of coming from them, my idea of what a warrior of honour must be is not that alike being a pirate, but rather a noble heart warrior. Thus I began to think that being a brave warrior doesn't mean just killing all those you meet on your road included weak people and children. I began to divide more and more between courage and cruel cowardy. I realized that if you kill some living being, it must be at par. Killing and also beating and fighting someone that you know is inferior as for strength or condition or chance to survive, is just of cowards.

I thought about hunting and thought it would have been ok to face an animal with bared hands, running and trying to catch it, but shooting with a firegun was much too easy and really cowardly. The same was about fishing. I tried to catch fish with my hands, no more with a trick. Hiding a hook behind a tasty bait is not loyal, but it's cowardly. And so on. Taking a child or a calf away from its mother to kill it, is cowardly, no matter if it's a four legged animal or two legged human, no matter if you eat it or what ever you want to do with it. Taking advantage of  anyone weaker than you, who have less choices to escape or to defend themselves, is a cowardly action.

I decided not to be a coward any more. I could prove my courage in other ways.

Other ways meant a lot of things, among them there were different sports, martial arts, travelling alone risking to be assaulted and see if I was really able to defend myself (which I always was, by all means), challenges among friends or even against myself. First of all it meant never fear anything and to defend the weaker beings, to fight just against those who were alike me, not just smaller or weaker. With no tricks. A loyal fight, always. Meanwhile, I had the strange impression that I was almost  "invulnerable". What could hurt others much, would have just touched me slighty. I had a few accidents, never so serious, and I was always neglecting to cure myself well. I was sure I would have been always got well . I was convinced I was hard and strong.

Later I realized I had been quite unconscious rather than brave. I was strong, yes, but still human! With time, I began suffering from various pains. It began from a shoulder, then my poor back, cervical arthrosis, a knee, ankles, wrist and more...until I found myself being almost an invalid. One of my knees was so weak that I started to suddenly fall down, I had to stop riding my motorbike, to do physical training, to skate, to make any kind of sport. I was often compelled to stay in bed with a terrible headache due to cervical arthrosis attacks or I was often blocked in bed for days with awful pain in my back. I couldn't bow my knees any more, specially the left one, and, in case I had to knee, I suffered a lot and it was hard to raise again.

 Not to mention my shoulders, that needed neverending massages, with just none relief. I suffered from back ache 24 hours a day. I couldn't sit on my sofa anymore without arranging cushions a certain way, but I was going to need just a certain strange position or to sit on a hard chair. I had to sleep a special way to try to reduce back pain a little. I had to stop playing guitar since my left wrist and hand were painful. I had to walk with help of a stick to avoid to fall down. My life had become an invalid's life. It became harder and harder to go working and I was just thinking about asking for support from the health assurance. I was sad and angry, I could have been very depressed if I weren't been so morally strong. To become officially an invalid still seemed to me so bad and I kept on gritting my teeth, but it was just matter of short time. I was just becoming an old wreck ready for demolition...

Meanwhile I had decided to avoid more and more every cowardly deed against all those who are weak and without defense, like most animals are, so I had become vegetarian from some time, which didn't mean any health improvement, naturally. Then I decided that it was not enough and I turned vegan. And it was good not only for lots of animals which I didn't help killing nor torturing any more, but for myself as well. It was not so immediate, naturally, but after some time I realized the pain in my shoulders, that I had been suffering from for years, had  disappeared. Later on, I stopped feeling so badly in the morning and began not to have so many problems when rising from bed, as my back was a bit better and it was getting better and better. Then, as time passed, every pain almost disappeared. I stopped walking with a stick, I didn't need anymore to stay in bed with terrible pains, I could sit in any position I want on my sofa, I could ride again and run and jump. I have taken again some training also with weights, I live my normal life again. Moreover, I have perfect blood tests, blood pressure and everything. 

Well, sure I can't say it will last forever, we humans have to die, and there are many diseases that can attack us no matter what we eat. But, isn't it a good way to take your life again in your hands for a while? Speciallly if you have grown up feeling you are sort of warrior of life, and later you seem to be compelled to resign yourself to pain and to stop every deed, and then, instead, you are back on your path, sailing on your knorr, and can still take your sword and shield in your hands and fight your battles without  grasping sadly at a  walking stick... 

Would you, old or/and wounded Vikings, like to try to recover you too?

Some of you must be unaware Odin's children.

If you think it could be, just be patient and take your time to read the following very very long post

I think time has come to tell someone else my family story. That's something I seldom say, just to the few ones that know me well and can understand. Yet, I hope there are many more Odin's children that could listen and be interested in knowing it, other brothers and sisters waiting for stories alike their own which they haven't been able to ever tell before now. There must be some, I'm sure. That's why I'm going to write it here and spread among even unknown people.

I come from a Swedish father who has always been very proud of his Viking origin. Well, the oral traditional story in my family tells that, on my father's side, we come from the god Odin and one of his human lovers, a Viking warrior woman from South-Eastern Swedish coast, whose name is uncertain (likely Hrafnhild or Hallfrid or Thjodhild). My family name Odin is our original one (it's not just an alias, like some people out of Sweden believe), it comes from the god's Norse name Óðinn (Wōdin, Wōden, Wôdan, Wôtan in other lands), that then has become Oden in nowadays Swedish, although there are in Sweden a few that have as family name both Odin and Oden. Odin, in Swedish, is pronounced a bit differently than in English. My father was very proud of it and also proudly defined himself a modern Viking, which means he believed in equal rights and duties (most in duties than in rights, I must say) for both female and male children, as a modern person. My father was the first one to tell me about the many warrior Viking women that could use sword and axe and could fight like men, although not many people knew it then. His oral tradition spoke about fierce women in his family, who sailed and rode and fought like men. 

That means we children were all brought up as young modern Vikings, according to my father's idea of what a modern Viking has to be. Among other, you must be brave and loyal, always ready to fight with no fear. I was taught to defense myself physically, but specially I was expected to show a great moral strength. I learnt to never cry and was taught all what made (and still should make) me be -and shown- as a strong person. I had to learn to behave well as a girl, in certain occasions, and we all children of both sex had also to be able to do all what is needed at home, but I had more weapons than dolls among my toys, I was trained a bit to defend myself and to shoot as well. I got also used to beat other children any time I thought they deserved it (I'm not sure it was due to my education or to my natural temper, I think it was for them both). When once I said to some young schoolmates that I came from the god Odin, I had been teased, something like “Oh you believe you're a semi goddess, or you believe you are like Jesus Christ, God's son, here you are God's daughter, haha...”. I beat them all, and was satisfied with it, but I was also disappointed for they hadn't understood anything. It was not that I thought myself being something special. At the contrary, I was a bit confused, disoriented and in search of answers. Anyway I stopped telling others about my family story.

What I had learnt was fine, reassuring and useful to me, by all means, but I had many doubts about gods.

It sounded a bit odd that my father, who often repeated we were children of Odin, was a complete atheist.

When asking more to my father, he explained there is a theory according to which Odin had been a great man, a guide for people of his entourage, a wise and strong man, loved from his people so much that he was almost worshipped like a god and, after some time, likely after his death, he was considered just a god. This theory well explained that he was one of our ancestors. Not a god, but just a man, although a great one.

Yet, there was one more thing I couldn't understand so well. My family said Odin is our father, not the usual way he's called Allfather, but that he was REALLY father to us. My father called him “father”, my grandfather called him “father” too , and it was “father” to me and my siblings as well. I asked how can anyone be father to me, and also to my father, and to my grandfather and to any other kin in my family. I was answered a god can do many things that a human can't. Thus, was Odin a god or a human? My father said it doesn't matter much. What is important is to be related to someone who was great, so we had to be worthy of our ancestor, no matter whether he was a god or a man.

I decided that Odin was just a man. Nevertheless, one of my father's relatives, who had also the same ancestor on her mother's side, and was very proud to be able to say she came from a real god, explained the following to me, as sort of family secret: every time a woman coming from Odin in our family is going to conceive a child, Odin takes the place of her husband (or lover). So we all in our family are really conceived by the same god, who is our real father.

Everyone can imagine it did upset me a bit. Where is the woman's husband, then, when Odin takes his place? How can it be? And may it be true that Odin comes every time that in our family a new child is going to be conceived, or does it happen just now an then, once in each and every generation? Well, I ended not to believe her.

Nevertheless, there was something more, a simple yet special and almost secret rite each of us had to make every nine years. We renewed our knowledge of us as being Odin's real children, by a rite a bit alike what Vikings made to become blood brothers, involving some drops of our blood. So I asked myself why we do that if Odin is not a god?

I must add that my first father left me with another father, who was kin to him, related to him by the same origin and same family, who lived South, and sailed away (my first father, I mean, sailed away). It was quite a spread use among Vikings to send children to other families, not so strange for us neither, I thought, by all means. My second father had the same rules and family story of my first one, but after some time he and all in the family took some distance from all that.

Since I had also heard that real Vikings (let's say the “most Vikings of all”:)) were mostly rebels, intolerant of some laws and rules they didn't agree with in their land, who often sailed away to other lands, and my (first) father had sailed away too, I realize I was a real Viking, just in that same way, a rebel me too, rebel to the strict rules I was more and more requested to accept. Thus I too sailed away.

Like the ancient Vikings who left their homes and sailed across the sea, I discovered new worlds, even though a different way than them, naturally. I studied Swedish Literature and Norse Mythology at university, but I also studied and lived different religions, by books and by travelling, meeting other cultures, trying to set myself inside different people, cultures and religions. I got in touch with some kind of different phylosophy, not just religious. I made classes and attended, among others, mostly Hinduist ashram, Jewish synagogues, Christian churches to see if I could find out if some god really exist, and to see if I could believe and practise a religion that fitted me. Like an ancient Viking, I was ready to settle myself in some new land, which doesn't mean just living in a certain country, but it's mostly a spiritual acceptance, no matter where I live. At last I found the culture that seemed to fit me very well in Zen Buddhism, specially in what was proper of Samurai's art of war: spirit, body and weapon are a whole. I did like it much applied to the art of sword and bow. 

Wonderful, although it had to take years. It didn't matter, I had time, I had found my new world. I was learning and it was quite hard, since I had always been impulsive in that kind of things, although I had tried yoga for a while in the past and learnt some meditation. I had to learn to be more patient and it worked just a bit, but I had still a long way to walk on. I also realized that I had to try to become a bit wiser and that new path would have led me to wisdom and much strength.

Meanwhile, I must add, I had also got married, have had a daughter, divorced and mostly sailed alone the two of us, me and my daughter, who was often with me “on my knorr” for years...We have been through hard battles, always alone, with no warrior brothers nor sisters at our sides, a few times wounded, perhaps losing much, but never losing everything.

Well, I tried to calm me down and get more wisdom, yet I still felt I was a warrior and couldn't help it; a warrior, yet, who still had to learn so much about what I thought it was useful for my wars. I was well settling in Japanese world, but specially and generally in Zen, thinking about why not to try to move to Japan some day, although I don't care much of the physical place.

I had found what fitted me, or what I fitted best. I would have learnt how to use my spirit to become skilled in every kind of thing I wanted or needed to do. I was ready to go on like that, I seemed to have found my right path and my philosophy, more than a religion.

It was then that I heard his voice. Odin was calling me.
                                       
 It was like he said “daughter, you have been sailing far away for long time, don't you think it's time to come back home?”. Which I suddenly did, realizing he was right. I came back home and realized it was here that I belonged and still belong. 

The runes carved in small stones, which I had been used mostly as a child game, were waiting for me in their bag, they hadn't lost any of their power, they talked to me, they made me see Odin's advices. Odin has revealed to me he does exist, whatever you can or want him to imagine what he looks like. I came back home and repeated the ancient family rite, telling Odin that I recognized him as my father. My only father. The only father that hasn't left me, like the two humans that I have had and that have never cared much of me. He, only Odin, has never forgotten me. He's the only father of mine that has come and called me and helped me showing me his hand and the way to come back home.

Some time has past since then. I've sworn faith to my father, no need to say a Viking keeps an oath. I know he has always protected me, even through the hardest battles. Some times I have lost my weapon, but I've survived to fight again as long as Odin wants me to fight here. What else could a warrior wish but fighting? I'm happy for all that, I'm happy when thinking I'm likely to end my human life in battle. I've been taught from my human fathers that also female women go to Walhall, if they die in battle. Odin has shown me it's true. What else could I wish if not to go to my father, the only one who has really cared of me, and then prepare myself to stand by his side in the last fight? And one more thing. Maybe someone could think, like the young school mates of mine, I believe I'm someone special because I can call Odin my real father. Not at all. I know I'm not so worthy, I know I should have been and done much more and much better than I have. Perhaps I'm the worst of all Odin's children...

I'm still a bit confused about Odin's way to become father of some humans. I have a daughter. What must I think? I believe she's just my ex husband's daughter, I can't think different. Although I can accept that he's my father, I can't believe he also my daughter's father. Probably our Odin descent has stopped with me.

And I have one more question: how many brothers and sisters I have around in Midgard? Some of you may even not know they are Odin's children. Some maybe have family traditional stories and rites, like me, but many others among you maybe don't know who you really are, nor whom you come from either. Do think well! Why some of you don't have any evident tie to Asatru, yet you are more than just interested for some aleatory reason, rather, you feel something stronger. How many of you feel a special, unexplainable attraction to Aesir, yet you can't say why? 
Are you sure it's some interest like it was mine in other religions and cultures, that could even end after some time, or may it be because Odin has called you back home, because you are some other real children of him? Don't you believe you could be real Odin's children, the same way I am, even though maybe you were born in some far away land and culture and you just have never been told who you really are??

You may be Odin's children, my brothers and sisters...do tell your story or discover it!!!

The lost children of Odin

Images and verses written in runic letters. I have been taking my works around in Europe, searching for other sisters...

From the North

I left the fjord

and sailed alone

in icy flames.

I steered my way

to the shining light

of an ancient shield.

The historical sword in my hand,

I have pointed the bow back

toward home.

In the Southern light

I've got lost in the waves.

The futhark

I write some of my painted verses in runic letters, using the ELDER FUTHARK , made of 24 characters, although the Viking futhark had only 16.

Runes can lead our life to knowledge and give us help.