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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in gnosis

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Thor Love in a Raindrop

One might think a grocery store parking lot an unlikely place for religious gnosis. Truly, one does not need to adventure into the mists of a primeval forest or climb to the peak of a mountain to experience the gods, for they are all around us all the time. Though I enjoy a nice hike, of course, the gods are there wherever I go. 

It was the day after the summer solstice. I had not done any big ritual on the solstice with my kindred. I had gotten up to try to view the Parade of Planets before dawn, which proved to be less than perfect viewing despite the clear night, since I live not quite 6 miles from the brightest place on Earth (the Las Vegas Strip.) That afternoon at tea my housemate and I clinked teacups as if they were drink glasses and toasted the beginning of summer, so we did have a ritual, even if it was brief and simple. 

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Yesterday morning before my pool party there was a tremendous thunderstrike (the cat was not a fan, but it rained and I love it) a
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Nods. Yeah. I've been following the internet discourse on the difference between having female heroes and having a male hero rebra
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    Yes, I remember seeing the Jane foster Thor back when we still had a comic book shop in town. I had pretty much dropped comic boo
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Hi Anthony! Yeah I thought the trailers were cringy. The entire idea of the movie is cringy. Disney says "Let's have female Thor!"
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I've seen a trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder at the theater and I have mixed feelings about it. I haven't looked at the complet

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

For those waiting for me to report some more personal gnosis here on Gnosis Diary, today is the day! I had a significant dream, another gnosis experience, and I also have a few news items to report. I'll start with the dream. The gods usually don't appear in my dreams. This one felt very different from regular dreams.

dream

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs


Recently there was a discussion in the Asatru Facebook Forum that evolved a subthread about Godan, the name of Odin among the Lombards. I received some gnosis, and so, since this blog is Gnosis Diary, I'm going to tell you all about it.

As background to the Godan discussion: The main thread had been affirming the original poster's exploration of Asatru as a possible path, which grew into discussion of Unitarian-Universalist style religion, which eventually branched into the Godan discussion. It was pointed out that the name Godan was the origin of the English name God for the Christian God. This led to a question of whether they were the same god.

At this point Odin spoke in my head. (Which is not unusual for me at all, as you see if you read the past few years' blog posts, and we had just been communicating during my daily morning coffee ritual a few minutes before, so this was not a remarkable occurrence except that he had a message he wanted conveyed.) "I am not the same god."

Since the original post was a new seeker's intro post, when Odin joined the conversation in my head I wanted to be sure to express it in a way that would not be received as argumentative or unwelcoming. I remember very well how people reacted to my first few reports of messages from the gods, like "Don't poison the Earth," which I had to completely recast as "Love nature and care for her" before people found the message acceptable, when I first started receiving this type of gnosis a few years ago when I was opened to the gods by writing fiction. So with that in mind, I crafted my comment.

Additional background: the comment to which I was responding also mentioned the "chosen people" thing, which I why I included a reference to it in my answer. One of the differences between Odin and YHVH is that Odin doesn't have a chosen people. Some of the heathen gods were patrons or ancestors of species tribes or nations in historical times-- the Lore specifically says the Langobards were named by Frigga who favored them in a war, for example-- but they never said other people couldn't worship them. So the comment to which I was responding started off by commenting about the name Godan being borrowed for the name of xian God, and also included a reference to YHVH having a chosen people.

So here is the comment I created to convey my gnosis in a way that other Asatruers would find unobjectionable:

True. So if people want to reclaim the name God / Godan for Odin that's fine. The being most people mean by the name God is someone else entirely, who may or may not be still the same god whose name was taboo; since that god did have a chosen people and most modern day xians are not from that people it begs the question who that guy really is anymore, but that's beyond the scope of a study of heathenry so I have no answers there. One thing I do know, well two things, firstly that all outlooks from atheist to unitarian-universalist to soft polytheist to hard polytheist are part of modern Asatru and are welcome here, and secondly that Odin is not YHVH because he told me so. That's another thing that is welcome here: gnosis. Because the gods are here now.

(comment finished with smiley face emojis.)

So, here is my opinion about what it's like to have gnosis like this: it's easy to communicate with the gods. What's hard is figuring out how to talk about communicating with the gods in a way that other people won't knee-jerk want to argue with. I think there are probably lots of people who have gnosis like this and just don't talk about it because it's so hard to talk about. That's one of the things I want to help with by writing this blog and also by running the forum: to normalize talking about gnosis so it will be easier in the future.

I know I succeeded in crafting my response correctly because my comment led to a nice discussion of the other person's gnosis and opinions. Which led to the related but distinct discussion of how different is Odin from Godan from Wodan, and how different is one person's Odin from another person's Odin. I think Odin, Godan, and Wodan are simultaneously different and the same. And for the second question, I like the metaphor of the godphone, where everyone has a distinct phone number and might get the wrong voicemails if they dial in from someone else's. When I receive gnosis I always know if it's just for me or intended to be conveyed to other people. The very few messages I receive to convey are such a small percentage of the conversations I have in my mind with my gods that they stand out like a red tree among yellow and green trees. Like looking a hillside full of trees in autumn and there is only one maple tree in the whole forest. Usually the only time I can just directly relay a message without trying to craft a way to say it nicely is when I'm giving a rune reading, in which case people already expect and want a message. This is a skill it took me years to learn, and I'm not sure I'd really say I've mastered it yet; if I had, perhaps it would be easy. lol.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
A Conversation with my Late Companion

It's been almost a year since my companion Tom died. I know he's around a lot, protecting me, but I hardly ever hear him speak to me through my godphone anymore. At first we communicated a lot, right after he died. Recently instead of actual conversations our communication has been limited to my setting out flowers and drinks for him on the main house shrine which has a permanent area dedicated to Tom. That counts as a form of communication for a noncorporeal being, including both gods and the dead.

The other day I saw some silly pun online and thought of Tom because he loved puns when he was alive. My thoughts connected with him and I found myself in a mental conversation with him. While he was alive, I could always tell when he was feeling good because he was a pun-o-matic throwing puns as fast as I could catch them. This time, he tried to make a pun and it came out a complete hash that did not even register as words to me.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Heimdall's Guardians

I had a conversation via the godphone in my head with my companion Tom the day after his military funeral. In life, he followed Heimdall, and in death he joined Heimdall's company. Heimdall is the Guardian of the Rainbow Bridge, and those who join him in the afterlife are likewise Guardians, but they guard living people here on the earthly plane of existence. Just to be clear, this blog is Gnosis Diary and you are reading gnosis right now, though bits of lore might also appear in this story.

I've had multiple conversations with Tom since his death and I already knew he had become my spiritual protector in his afterlife. I have made a habit of starting my day by sitting next to his shrine, lighting a candle, sharing a beverage with him and spending some quiet moments together, whether we speak or not. Often the cat joins us. Our little family of three, all together.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Anthony, there are. We got one in the mail from our vet's office after our kitty Beni-Wan Cat-Obi died. It was clearly meant to be
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I'm not familiar with the corporate greeting cards you mentioned. Are there actually greeting cards for people who's pets have di

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

It's my longstanding gnosis, which begun as novel gnosis but was later confirmed in the current universe, that the goddess Hel likes blue agave. Thus, tequila. Thus, mojitos.

A mojito is made of tequila, mint leaves, sugar syrup, and lime juice. In the summer season, I have fresh mint in the garden, so I pick it fresh. I usually put in some flavored sweetened syrup instead of simple syrup that is only made of sugar and water. One of my favorites is elderflower tonic, which I also use for vodka cocktails. Hel doesn't seem to care what else is in the tequila as long as it's Patron. Patron the drink is a pun on patron god, and was novel gnosis from my unpublished novel Some Say Fire. I didn't realize until much later that it was more than a symbolic pun and she actually does like it, but if you have a different relationship with that goddess you might toast her with a different kind.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Sometimes insights come from lighthearted conversation rather than deep mystical trances in the woods. This is one of the challenges we face in these times of isolation: the challenge of just have conversations with other heathens or mystics or etc. Internet forums and plain old telephones come to our rescue. It isn't always enough, but this time it was.

I was talking on the phone to another heathen and mentioned the solar lights I added to my pool this year, claiming I have a light-up pool eyeball. Of course I was just joking when I said, "My pool is Mimir's Well and I swim in it every day, and at night I swim with the light-up eyeball. I don't think it's Odin's eye, though, it's the eye of a monster. The monster that lives in my pool."

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