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The dark and cold of the Winter Solstice is traditionally cheered up with fire and food. "Good cheer" is used to mean the company of friends and family, holiday foods, and especially holiday drinks. Mulled, spiced apple cider is also called wassail, which is also the name of a custom of a group of people singing to the apple trees, similar to caroling but singing to trees instead of going around to different houses singing to people.

I still want good cheer at this time of year, but, I started out the month trusting and hoping that I will have my new Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) back in time for the holidays-- I had been off my monster medicine since before Thanksgiving due to a "pre-authorization" issue, but hoped to be back on it by Yule-- so I was planning to have my cheer with perfume and other sensory pleasures. I will still have some food and drink too, but it is going to be a small part of my celebration rather than the main focus. 

My Monster Powers journey continues. I started weaving a small tapestry in honor of the Gila Monster.

I've been participating in the forum on the website my brother introduced me to. I'm not only learning a lot but also coming to consider new ways of thinking about perfumes. Of course I'm already familiar with the idea of honoring certain powers and gods at certain times.

Today we're exploring the senses other than taste. In Asatru and heathenry, the most common sacrifice is sumbel, that is, making a toast. The person honoring the god or other power drinks the beverage, so the person is experiencing and consuming the thing given to the god. Other sacrifices work the same way. For example, an offering of dance is the person giving the offering doing the dance. A person burning a special candle experiences the light and scent. And so on.

As mentioned in Part 1, I wanted to find ways of honoring the gods and powers other than by eating and drinking because as part of my Gila Lizard Powers I no longer have the same relationship with food and drink as I did before.

Typical Asatru holiday rituals involve toasts. Many holiday celebrations include feasts as part of the holiday. There lies before us a whole world of senses to explore besides taste, though. There are of course also many actions beyond the sensory and beyond simply giving a thing, and I'll get to those in a future part of this series, but first I want to focus on the senses other than taste.

This will be a multi part series, starting with this overview which includes a section on: why now in my personal journey. I'll review some terms, and then get to the senses other than taste: hearing, sight, touch, smell, and proprioception. Then I'll go over some actions one can do that don't involve the senses, such as donating to causes, and some meditations and journeys inward and through the other worlds leaving the body and the sensory world behind.

A striking sight with her beaded skin of pink and black, Gila Monster blends well into her desert home in Arizona. This sluggish-seeming lizard intently flicks her tongue to detect a tasty mouse. At other times, She adroitly climbs the cactus with her sharp claws to hunt for perching birds. Tasting the air with her forked tongue, Gila Monster finds Desert Rat, and quickly chomps down with her vice-like jaws. Then She swallows her paralyzed victim whole and head first.

Gila Monster with her Brother – Mexican Beaded Lizard – are the only venomous lizards (Helodermatidae) in the world. Because of their venom and forked tongues, Gila Monster (Heloderma suspectum) and her Brother (Heloderma horridum ) are distant relatives of snakes. These two lizards are also close relatives to monitor lizards (Varanidae), who possess poisonous saliva, and could be ancestors of snakes. These two beaded lizards have an ancient ancestry, extending back to the mid-Cretaceous.