Falkabarn, formerly Sparkle Puca, has been at the Heathenry thing since the summer of 2012.
Since I don’t have any active social media tied to this blog anymore (the Facebook page still exists, but is deactivated and unviewable)…here. An altar cleaned after sitting half-dead for a year, minus one hammer because I’m willing to wear it again.
Don’t get too excited, my offline life mattered more than my online life. This blog mostly still exists because I forgot I had my hosting costs on autopay.
Don’t ask me what’s up with the Jord devotional, though. I don’t know either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
Hello Friends, Since I have been really struggling to write anything, I’ve gone to my trusty prompt box and I’m going to work through some prompts until the well fills up with ideas again. Update, for all y’all, I still am sick with walking pneumonia and having a terrible time sleeping. I have a feeling […]
Prompt No. 1: The Hardest Part of Faith
This past weekend marks five years since I made my five-year pledge, which means the time limit on the pledge has closed.
I didn’t satisfy the requirements in full, though I did satisfy it partially, and the partial stuff I did, I feel like I did reasonably well. There was no agreed-upon consequences for incomplete compliance. I don’t know what happens next.
To review, as was mentioned in the one-year post, these were the terms I was supposed to adhere to. Italicized are the ones I feel I did well:
I did not get ordained through—my own words—”concerted effort.” I did get ordained through the ULC. Case law has since changed, making my ordination actually worth something in the state of Pennsylvania. Hooray. But I have been ordained neither through the Troth, nor through my kindred, which were the other two avenues available to me.
(I could have also gotten ordained through TAC but lol, lmao, fuck that.)
Did I assist my community to the best of my ability? Maybe? Yes. I should probably say “yes,” because in that time frame was when Seasons of Transition and Jarðarblót (and then later the version that hybridizes it with Sigrblót) came about. But, “my community” and “the best of my ability” are constantly shifting targets, even locally. I think it’s safe to say that the local community was well tended to, at least, though it’s hard to measure that by any metric beyond vibes.
Did I keep studying the lore and language? Uh. No. Yes, but no. I did not keep my nose stuck in books like I had planned and hoped. I did not read starter guides to Heathenry with any real commitment. I dragged my feet so hard with Heathen Essentials that the curriculum was completely rewritten by the time I’d finished unit one. I attempted to read some of those guides, even the ones by people I knew (or assumed) I agreed with based on our everyday conversations, and ended up really…kind of hating them. A lot. So much.
Basically, nobody has any business bitching about recons if they insist on defining reconstructionism as fundamentalism.
What I ended up doing, what has ended up feeling vastly more relevant, was getting into capital-T-theory. You can tell me all you like about what the lore says about Frigg. And you should, because I always need the refresher. (Especially now, trying to incorporate her into my Sigrblót ritual for this year.) But nothing has ever described her, and her function, and her meaning and her relevance to humanity, anywhere near as well as Angela Davis did in chapter 13 of Women, Race and Class. And Angela Davis never mentioned her by name. Angela Davis literally was not thinking of her. The Secret Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben spoke to how human trees are, or perhaps to how tree-like humans are, or were, or have forgotten how to be, in a way that put the breath and the blood and the color back into the metaphor of Ask and Embla. This was not lore and language research, but at least it was research that helped me try and serve the community.
Right now, my collar and oath ring are sitting on the altar. The collar came off first, admittedly just for the practical reason that the maille was trapping mineral wool and cotton fluff that fell on me while I was helping friends rip out their old ceiling, and it itched. The cuff came off on the 26th of March, because I realized I had hit the five-year mark and it just…felt like time. Its initial purpose has been served. Soon, I guess I’ll just have to have something resembling an actual conversation with Loki about where we’re at. Even with the pledge, even with trying to maintain compliance, I’ve been distant. I just haven’t felt super motivated to Be Heathen.
I feel very tempted to blame how fucking riddled with influencers the Heathen scene has always been, and how it seems to be constantly getting worse. I feel very justified in this temptation. I basically cannot tolerate interacting with other Heathens online anymore and it’s not a denominational thing. I hate feeling like my practice is a product. Even when I do have things to report, I like to believe that I tend to keep them to myself until I’ve properly processed the sequence of events and have something genuinely helpful for the potential audience to hear.
(“Try it sometime!” I want to passive-aggressively screech, every fucking day.)
That’s not the only reason, though. I’m realizing something while hanging out over in the Tumblr Moomin fandom, in a niche where we are metaphorically gripping each other by the shoulders and somewhat more literally frothing at the mouth about how much of a dad Snufkin is. (Just…read Moominsummer Madness and you’ll understand.)
Talking about Loki simply doesn’t excite me the way it used to. The novelty is gone. The commentary is exhausting. The discourse is repetitive. I have lost my interest in hearing others express their perspective and experience of the divine. (With a notable, loving exception for Lea Svendsen’s Loki and Sigyn, which was a very enjoyable read literally from the first sentence.) I am tired of watching the same arguments continually play out, hearing the same stock phrases used in lieu of ever actually engaging with anything being said. Tired of expressing how fucking tired I am of these things.
The limerence has faded. I have settled in, and I have not learned to settle in as an appreciative lover might—though my dynamic with Loki is emphatically not romantic, and I have insisted from the start that it never will be.
More than once I have contemplated something resembling monasticism, but I think that I have the responsibility to be very much in the world. And what I am craving in that desire for something like operating as a nun or religious sibling is not an outward expression of deep devotion and duty, but rather something far less charming and far more selfish: Structure, importance, absolution from having to make decisions for myself.
Awful.
Over and over and over what I write in my prayer journal, which I do with less and less frequency, is that I wish I was doing more. I then proceed to never act on it. I am sitting on my ass demanding proof while seeking out fewer and fewer opportunities to have anything proven to me. I am functionally agnostic most days. It doesn’t feel like a tragedy, though I often feel like it should feel that way.
The goal of the pledge was to light a fire under my ass, and it certainly did for at least the first few years. I have gotten a lot done. I don’t know what it all means. I don’t know how much of it counts towards the goals that were set five years ago. I don’t know what happens as a result of what doesn’t count or what didn’t make the cut.
It feels like this ought to be sad. Seeing my bare wrist does feel sad, because I remember how uncomfortably full of love and energy I was when I bought it in an airport in Austin, Texas, back when the only other things I cared about were the loons in the Colorado river and the feral parakeets in the grass and the big, shiny grackles fighting over scraps of food on the sidewalk outside some overpriced cafe, where the only thing I remembered was the sweet potato fries and the complicated trash categories. Feeling the absence of the heavy weight of my collar that Goat made for me does feel sad.
I don’t know where we’re going from here. I feel like it must be standard to express excitement or anticipation for what happens next. But I have so little concept for what it will be, and admittedly, not as much interest as I wish I did. I don’t even know what to expect next. It all feels very formless.
You may recall my post in which I described the very weird sequence of events that resulted in me becoming Heathen, which I often point out happened by accident. Or a series of small accidents and weird decisions which, if not necessarily HAPPY accidents, were at least entertaining.
Bob Ross would be so proud.
You may also recall that I said I never finished it. At the time, that was true. But in August, while checking my Facebook memories and seeing my contextless post about throwing a composition book out of a window, I was reminded that, holy shit, I set out to write that ridiculous trollfic TEN YEARS AGO. I became a Heathen by accident TEN YEARS AGO.
So, against all better judgement, I finished it. I have kept the kinkshaming. I have kept the thing about Beck (as in, the loser scientologist folk-singer slob) living in Loki’s closet. I have kept the stitch-n-bitch and the baby shower and all of the other absolutely ridiculous bullshit and–the stupidest decision of all–decided to publish it.
Notes on content: Because this is literally based on Loki getting knocked up by a horse, this is kind of unavoidably an mpreg fic. I have pointedly kept it goofy. Also, holy shit, this is over 4,000 words.
I am going to be compiling, editing and releasing a devotional through the Troth! I am seeking out work written in honor of the Earth through a Heathen perspective, by the various names she has in our traditions. Devotional works in honor of the land are also welcome.
I am placing particular emphasis on poems, prayers, and rituals, but artwork would be enthusiastically accepted as well!
You do not have to be a member of the Troth to submit your work, just bear in mind that because we are publishing through them, any submissions have to comply with the Troth’s stance on inclusivity. We will also be asking for first publishing rights in North America. This means that the Troth has the right to be the first to distribute your contribution—after that, you can republish your work with no restrictions. There is also a release form to sign, which I will provide.
Please also bear in mind that contributions are not paid. All proceeds from sales of the published devotional will go towards Red Hammer, which is the Troth’s disaster relief fund.
Contributions can be emailed to peaksinmay AT Gmail DOT com. Submission deadline is December 31st, 2022, with the goal of releasing the finished book in April.
For three years now, I’ve been hosting a ritual to Jörð on the Saturday before Earth Day.
At first, the motivation behind these rituals was a bit selfish. Finally realizing the severity of the climate crisis was crushing, which should be unsurprising given that it is literally the biggest threat ever posed to living things on this planet. I vividly remember laying face-down in the dry clay, alternately crying when lucid, and dissociating when not. Even a few minutes earlier I would have still found the phrase “dirt-worshipping Heathen” obnoxious, but I couldn’t exactly act like this wasn’t a fair accusation now.
The thing is, this existential fear isn’t new. It was only new to me. And the reason it was new to me was because whiteness and my family’s class status had insulated me from having to actually confront it. I can buy my life off the shelf if I so choose, enabled by colonial government and exploitative industry. This crisis has been ongoing for literally everyone else, for hundreds of years.
This sense of interconnection that the looming threat of climate change brought me should have been intuitive. But the world built on my behalf requires being separated from the earth. The comparatively new sense of a sprawling, tangled web of fate under my feet filled me with cold-muscled fear.
Like most people who crack under the strain of pretending to cooperate with absolute bullshit and feeling like everyone else knows something you don’t, I brought it to therapy. My therapist tried his damndest to instill some hope in me for life on earth—namely Lif and Lifthrasir as a metaphor for plastic-eating, thermophilic microbes, should they evolve in our absence. But none of this took away from the core fear that the world is ending for real.
In part because I already associated the events in ragnarök with the carbon cycle, I decided that the way to cope with my eco-anxiety would be through designing rituals again. This time, something heavily inspired by Völuspá.
Initially, what I had in mind had zero resemblance to the way I do Jarðarblót now. I had originally contemplated something theatrical, angry, and involving fake blood and scorn poles. I still have the unfinished papier-mâché horse head on a shelf in my closet. But eventually, something clicked.
Continue reading “Wealthy in Each Other’s Company”I didn’t get what I wanted.
Or thought I wanted. I dared to ask Freyja for help with romantic success, because I had been harboring a crush for someone for years, plural, by this point. Raising my elderflower and rose lemonade, I asked her for the courage to try and get what I want.
When I got home after that ritual, fiddling with the little copper-colored Mardi gras beads, I elaborated on what I wanted: give me the confidence to take the risk of asking them out. I will get you a nice necklace.
She filled my head with bizarre dreams, and I bought her an amber pendant that resembled a drippy honey comb. Unbeknownst to me at the time, they were already well on the way into a partnership. I didn’t find out until several weeks later.
I didn’t call it heartbreak, but it knocked the wind out of me.
When I had finally gotten some energy back and I wasn’t calming myself by obsessively mowing the lawn, I railed against this perceived injustice, all the while knowing I still wasn’t ready. I didn’t actually want to be partnered, and certainly not with someone who didn’t want me. I had gotten into heated arguments with my therapist explaining as much. Vulnerability is agonizing. I am traumatized in ways I am still picking apart. Irrespective of whether I feel it’s ethical for me to bring this to a partner (and I don’t), I didn’t want to be in a position of risk.
It still felt like this was something being done to me. I felt like I had been lied to by Freyja, given symbolism in dreams that sang of interpersonal potential. Divination had been promising. I never felt the need to suspect any other outcome because we were making such good progress…I felt confident. And I had asked for confidence, right?
Continue reading “Putting On My Silver”
Falkabarn 