Gythia

She is the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboda, sister to Fenrir and Jörmungandr. When the gods learned of the children destined to play roles in Ragnarök, they feared them. Odin cast Hel into the realm of the dead and gave her authority over those who died from sickness, old age, or natural causes.

This realm became known as Helheim.

Modern culture often treats Hel as a punishment figure, yet the myths tell a different story.

Hel does not hunt the living. She does not drag souls into her hall. She receives those who arrive.

Her appearance reflects this role. One side of her body is described as healthy and living, while the other is dark, pale, or corpse-like. She exists between states, embodying both life and death at once.

One of the most important myths involving Hel begins with the death of Baldr. After Baldr is killed, the gods send Hermóðr to Helheim to negotiate his return.

Hel agrees.

She declares that Baldr may leave if every being in the worlds weeps for him.

Everything does.

Gods, giants, animals, and spirits mourn Baldr’s death. Everything except one figure, believed to be Loki in disguise. Because a single being refuses, Baldr remains among the dead.

The myth reveals something important.

Hel is not cruel.

She follows the law of her realm.

She is a keeper, a guardian, and a ruler of boundaries. She governs the place where the dead reside and ensures the order of that kingdom remains intact.

In Norse mythology, Hel is not a villain.

She is the one who stands at the inevitable threshold every living thing must eventually cross.

Unlike many gods, she never pretends death can be avoided.

Ereshkigal ruled the Mesopotamian underworld centuries before Hades became widely recognised through Greek mythology. She governed Kur, the land of the dead, where souls existed in darkness, dust, silence, and permanent separation from the living. Her realm carried no glory or redemption. Only inevitability.

Her mythology reaches its most devastating point through the Descent of Inanna. When Inanna enters the underworld, she passes through seven gates where her jewels, clothing, authority, and power are stripped away piece by piece. By the time she stands before Ereshkigal, she is exposed and vulnerable. The journey becomes more than physical descent. It represents ego death, grief initiation, spiritual unraveling, and confrontation with forces beyond human control.

Mesopotamian texts portray Ereshkigal as isolated rather than monstrous. She rules a kingdom nobody enters willingly, separated from the heavens and surrounded by death itself. Some versions describe her erupting in rage and pain during intense suffering, linking feminine power with destruction, transformation, and mourning.

Unlike modern portrayals of darkness made to feel beautiful or seductive, Ereshkigal embodies abandonment, endings, decay, shadow states, and the permanence of loss. Her mythology strips away comforting illusions surrounding death. No bargains. No escape. No return without sacrifice.

In witchcraft and underworld traditions, Ereshkigal is associated with shadow work, ancestral currents, spirit communication, grief rituals, and transformation through collapse. Devotees often describe her energy as brutally confrontational, forcing hidden wounds into awareness.

That is what makes Ereshkigal so feared. She represents the truth every civilisation tried to outrun. Everything eventually descends into the underworld.

Seiðr is not passive divination. It is the manipulation of outcome, a form of magic that bends probability, perception, and destiny itself. Those who practice it are often called völva, seeresses who move between worlds, not as observers, but as participants in what unfolds.

Among them stands Freyja, who is said to have brought seiðr to the gods. This is not minor magic. It is considered dangerous, unpredictable, and deeply tied to forces that do not operate within clean structure. It alters not just events, but the thread that leads to them.

Even Odin sought this knowledge, learning from Freyja despite the cost. In Norse culture, seiðr carried a reputation that blurred boundaries, seen as powerful but also as something that could unmake the one who used it if not controlled. It required entering altered states, stepping outside the body, moving through layers of reality that were not meant to be navigated without consequence.

The völva does not stand in a fixed place.

She travels.

Through trance, through ritual, through voice. Chanting, rhythm, and repetition were used to shift awareness, to reach a point where the barrier between present and possible becomes thin enough to influence.

This is not about seeing the future.

It is about interacting with it.

In Norse thought, fate is not a single fixed line, but a woven structure, shaped by the Norns. Seiðr does not replace that weaving. It interferes with it, redirects threads, changes tension, shifts outcome without fully breaking the structure.

A Viking witch is not separate from battle, survival, or power.

She stands inside it.

Not waiting to see what happens but deciding what can be changed before it does.

If nothing in your path holds you accountable, it is not the old way.

The Bones of the Old Way ~ Part 1
This Is Not a Religion of Salvation

There is no salvation waiting for you in the Norse world. There never was.
One of the most persistent misunderstandings brought into modern Norse paganism is the assumption that people need to be saved, that something is spiritually broken in the human condition and that the purpose of religious practice is to restore what was lost or cleanse what has accumulated. That idea does not come from the sources. It comes from a different tradition entirely, one that has shaped Western thinking so thoroughly that people carry its assumptions into frameworks built on entirely different foundations without noticing they have done so.

The Eddic material does not describe a fallen state. There is no moment in the Norse sources where humanity becomes spiritually corrupted and requires divine restoration. No promise is extended that the Gods will absolve you of what you have done or reset the account of your choices. The Norse world does not begin with guilt. It begins with existence, with relationship, and with responsibility and it does not flinch from what that means.

When you look at the Poetic Edda and particularly at the Hávamál, what you find is not a system of redemption. You find instruction on how to live wisely within consequence. Óðinn does not offer forgiveness. He offers counsel, hard-edged and direct, the accumulated weight of a wisdom tradition that looks at the world as it is and tells you how to move through it without losing what matters.

Hinn er sæll, er sér um getr lof ok líknstafi. A person is fortunate who earns good reputation and the goodwill of others. That is not a statement about belief or inner spiritual condition. It is a statement about what you do and how you are remembered by the people who outlive you. The distinction is not subtle. It is the entire point.

In this worldview, actions do not disappear. They are carried forward through reputation, through the relationships you build or break, through what later generations hold of your name when you are no longer present to defend or explain it. There is no ritual that resets you. There is no prayer that erases what has been done. There is no moment where the account is wiped clean and you are returned to a neutral state from which to begin again. What you do becomes woven into your wyrd/Urðr and Urðr is not a system of mercy. It is a system of unfolding consequence, patient and without exception.

Even the Gods are not outside of this. Óðinn acts, chooses, manipulates and sacrifices and every choice he makes carries forward toward Ragnarǫk. Þórr fights, Baldr dies, Loki is bound and none of it is undone by divine will or cosmic reset. If the Gods themselves cannot escape the weight of their choices then the idea of a human escape from consequence is not simply absent from this tradition. It is structurally impossible within it.

This is why behavior matters in the Norse framework and why it matters in a way that carries more weight than systems built on forgiveness allow. You will not be judged and absolved. You will be known. Your word, your actions and your reputation are not things that happen alongside your life. They are what your life is made of, the only substance that persists when everything else falls away.
That is the foundation. Not comfort. Not promise. Not the relief of a slate wiped clean.

Consequence, reputation and the weight of what you actually do.
That is where we begin.

The Gods offer no erasure and the well of Urðr holds no mercy. What you do becomes what you are, and what you are becomes what endures.
~The Roots of Yggdrasil~

I have only one thing to say as past Member, Steer, Redeswoman, and Steward of The Troth. When I brought up issues that needed attention in the wider Heathen community, I was hamstrung and censured. When my husband defended me, so was he.

The things we wanted to fix have now caused more harm because instead of acting, Heathens deliberate. Instead of removing problems by pruning a branch, we wait until rot taints the heartwood.

5 years have passed since I walked away from the Troth. It was sick then. As an outsider it looks sicker now. I doubt it will recover from this. I personally don’t think it should.

This is a Ragnarok moment for inclusive Heathenry. 5 years ago I said we need to reform our core, and recenter our values. Instead we placate. Well, now we burn. Perhaps this is the culmination of the attacks we saw then. Yet another victory for those who find ways to divide us.

I do not support Diana’s lack of action and unwillingness to address conflicts that need to be addressed. Particularly as Clergy. But this decision will be a blow to what those of us standing against the fascists hoped to achieve. I can see there was no good decision in this. I can feel empathy for the Rede in this. But ultimately, you have done the enemies’ work for them by avoiding for so long the conflict you have judged Diana for. You, too are guilty of those charges today.

May you all get the rewards your actions have earned.

Meet Nehalennia, a mostly forgotten Goddess of Trade.

Nehalennia. Nehalennia is known from more than 160 votive altars, which were almost all discovered in the Dutch province of Zeeland.

Beginning sometime near the second century BC, the Goddess Nehalennia was honored where the Rhine river met the North Sea. Votive inscriptions and numerous altars were dedicated to Her, and temples built in Her honor. Sometime after the third century CE, Her temple was covered by the ocean, where it rested undisturbed for more than a thousand years.

In 1645, a storm on the coast of Zeeland eroded away the land and unearthed Her temple once again. Since then, the altars, inscriptions, and offerings to Her have been studied carefully, archaeologists attempting to rediscover Her secrets. Not only that, but She has managed to recapture the imagination of the local populace. A new temple to Her was built in the town of Colijnsplaat in 2005.

From Nehalennia, we know that She is likely either a Germanic or Celtic Goddess. That’s where the agreement of scholars ends. Rudolph Simek in his Dictionary of Northern Mythology gives a possible etymology as relating to the Latin verb ‘necare’ which means ‘to kill’. Kauffmann believes it relates to *neu, a word for ship. This relates to many of the inscriptions found dedicated to Her, which tend to be merchants thanking Her or petitioning Her for safe passage across the sea. There are also frequently boats depicted on Her altars. There is no clear translation or etymology for Nehalennia, however. Her three main symbols are a basket filled with apples, a greyhound and a ship. All of these suggest she was a major trade and sea Goddess.

Her dress is inspired after the famous blue and white Dutch pattern. 💙

Working on the book. Reached the section on Creating Her Priesthood. Realized that before I get into that, I need to write some about what does it mean to be a pagan priest. So, I want to crowd source this a bit. What does it mean to be a Pagan Priest to you?

I am really excited to announce that on June 11th I passed my certification exam to be a Death Doula. This is leading to a project to gather information and create trainings for those in the death and dying industries so that they are more aware of the needs and customs of subgroups. Updates to come soon!