It's Okay

Hello friends,

I hope you are safe. I hope you are warm.

This week’s musing comes from the essay my Patreon supporters so graciously funded. It’s about ice storms, and runes, and planting seeds for future worlds:

It’s okay to not be okay.

I know I’m not the first person to type or say these words, but this week? I’m repeating them for myself.

Times are rough. Really rough. Folks are freezing in detention camps, on the streets, and in their homes. People don’t have enough food. The pandemic still holds us in its grip.

We all know these are perilous times. Well, except perhaps for those insulated by so much wealth they can avoid seeing anything beyond the golden latches on their doors or their trips to Cancun.

That said, together, we’ve done our best. We’ve done well. We’ve helped each other. We’ve made countless pots of soup. We’ve wiped noses. We’ve figured out how to work online, or get through endless holds with unemployment. We’ve kept our children fed, somehow. Gotten some exercise. Binged some television. Maybe even read a book or three. 

But dealing with rolling wave of disaster after disaster with no end apparent? 

It’s hard, my friends. And I’m feeling that this week.

One morning, after meditation and prayer, I puled a rune. I wanted insight. Some advice, maybe. 

Carved into the wood, was a sort of H shape. Hagalaz. The hail stone.

“Shit,” I said, as a first reaction. “Thanks.” 

While that “thanks” was tinged with a sarcastic “thanks a lot” it also led me to ponder what pulling that rune might mean.

We are, of course, in the midst of massive ice and snow storms in much of the American continent. The rune is partially a reflection of that.

But Hagalaz not only signals the ice of destruction that lays waste to crops…

Hagalaz is not only “the sickness of serpents”…

Hagalaz is also “the coldest of grains” and a reminder that the ice will melt, and water the fields, so something new can grow. In its other form, which looks like a cross hatched, simple snowflake, it is said to hold the seed of creation within the heart of destruction.

I often relate Hagalaz to the Tower in Tarot. Some have said we’ve been living in the Tower for a long time. 

The old ways are crumbling, struck by lightning. We tumble through the air, not certain when, or if, we will ever land…

This is getting long, so please, read the rest here: The Ice of Change

Wishing you good health and clean water.

— Thorn