Garm is the helhound of Norse mythology. He is literally Hel's hound.
In the Fireverse, after Fenris is bound, Zisa misses having a puppy around the house, and takes steps to produce Garm. Garm’s parentage is kept secret and when he starts showing signs that he is not an ordinary dog he is sent to be Hel’s watchdog before anyone in Asgard guesses the truth. In the Fireverse, this is the secret behind Loki’s claim in Lokasenna to have had sex with Tyr’s wife.
The worlds are many things. They are times, places, states of mind, they are what is beyond the doors into otherworlds from Midgard, they are metaphors, and in the Fireverse they are also other dimensions. Jotunheim is 2D space. The story in which Freya rides Ottar to Jotunheim disguised as her battle pig is rendered in the Fireverse as “She rode him so flat they ended up in Jotunheim.”
Asgard is nine-space. When Loki is telling his versions of heathen mythology to the human character P, he tells the stories as if they happened in a three dimensional place so that the human can understand them, but he also tells her that they aren’t really like that. When Loki and P are sailing the ship through space, P is aware that it is not really a Viking longship despite its appearance, but when she asks Loki about it, he tells her to accept the metaphor as it is given to her.
In this series of posts, I will be presenting some of my novel gnosis, that is, my religious insights gained via writing fiction. Most of these come from my unpublished behemoth Some Say Fire, in which I retold the entire corpus of heathen mythology, with original work inserted interstitially, like in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Some of my novel gnosis comes from my Time Yarns Universe, which has both published and unpublished works in it.
I was in my garden digging planting holes. This had been the asparagus bed for years, but it hadn’t produced any spears this spring and my mom wanted to put petunias there. I turned over several asparagus crowns, flat with thick roots. I wanted to replant them, give them a chance to see if they would grow again. I wasn’t thinking about last week’s ritual.
Too often, heathens who try to discuss their gnosis on heathen forums are met with derision. I created the Quartz Metaphor of Gnosis to show why I think we should be able to discuss religious experiences in a religious forum. This metaphor shows how personal gnosis becomes group gnosis. It can’t happen if no one compares notes.
Imagine three people are in a forum talking about quartz.
This is how I was given to Sigyn earlier this year. It was my first time using my lavender extract that I made from the lavender I grew in my garden. At the time, I didn't know that I was about to need my connection to Sigyn to be very strong, because I was about to take on increased responsibilities as a family caregiver.
The first time I traveled with Tom was October 2014, on our first trip to Front Sight. I saw tons of ravens and butterflies. One might not expect a gun club to double as a wildlife refuge, but it has a lot of open land, including large undeveloped areas where people aren’t allowed. The first day out in the open desert, I saw lots of ravens. One raven flew over the range with prey in its beak. And the butterflies! Yellow ones, white ones, blue ones, brown ones, two different kinds of orange ones, even a couple of Monarchs!
Butterflies are Sigyn’s animal messengers, just like ravens are Odin’s. I took both those signs as cosmic thumbs ups.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...