Three Aettir / Three Soul Families

Aettir

I just had the coolest idea! I am going to take the three aettir of the futhark (the 3 rows or families of runes) and link them to my 3 primary ancestral ethnic families! Now, I am saying right from the get-go, this is my own personal gnosis. I make no claims that what I am going to do applies to everyone. This is my personal path, blazened toward the knowledge I am seeking within the depths of my own soul and kinfolk Folksoul.

The first aett (which I consider to be the eldest) I assign to my likely eldest European roots - my Slavic ethnicity.

The second aett goes to my ancestral family between my eldest and youngest European roots - my Germanic ethnicity.

The third aett goes to my youngest European roots - my Celtic ethnicity.

As I learn more, I will weave together my families by linking each rune also to one of my ethnic roots. I will evaluate each rune independent of the family aett it is in, thus weaving together the runes and my ethnic families. Who knows, maybe some runes will be wildcards from one of the smaller ethnicities found in my genetic ancestry. The future is open and I'm anxious to see what I will discover about myself and my tribes as I do this.

Wyrd Weaver

I dreamt two dreams.

I and two others were gently but hurriedly thrust into a small conference room with a conference table in the middle of it. (Relative to my field of forward perception with the northern direction being the direction of my first gaze) I was initially sitting on the southern long end of the table, as were the others. A teaching spirit sat across from us.

In the surface of the tabletop were patterns of star stuff, cosmic patterns - patterns born of orlog, patterns of wyrd. We each saw our own wyrd. I immediately recognized intimately as part of the Visceral Seeing of my Being, that everything in my lives was created by myself, even so much as the way I looked in each life, even the brace I wore on my back in this life as a teenager. I softly wept with joy. I was indeed the mistress of my life.

I was also joyful that I had been blessed with the opportunity that most people don't have - the opportunity to remember, to be wise.

I saw one little thing I wanted to adjust in the pattern from my previous life. I got up and went through the eastern door back into my past life to do that, but when I arrived, the past was being eaten up like in the movie The Langoliers. I couldn't make the adjustment that way, so I returned to the room with the conference table.

I sat down in the same place at the table and stuck my right index finger into the patterns of the table and made the one little adjustment. I immediately found myself on the northern long side of the table sitting by the teaching spirit. I realized that there were 12 lives apportioned to me in this cosmic cycle. In the room of the table, I was sitting between my eighth and ninth life. My eighth life was past, my current life was ninth. This life was tasked with making ready for my next life, which I felt was going to be a very important, regally powerful life in the cosmic scheme of things. This is why I was given the opportunity in this life to make the small adjustment I needed to make (the need stemming from some small thing in my previous life) in preparation for the role I would have in my next life. I was preparing myself for power, power born and supported by innate upright justice, sovereignty and rightful inheritance.

I woke up, fell back asleep, and dreamt again.

A small group from my past life had come through into this life and was trying to steal my power, but I escaped. I felt that these enemies had been enemies of my royal family for ages and ages. These enemies had followed me through lifetimes seeking to steal my family's royal power, but each time I escaped. They were always one step behind, always too little too late.

Their fate has been set, this life is sealing it. My next life will be the doom of them.

I woke up.

The Sagas in My Motherline

Two Saturdays past, I came upon the discovery of my spiritual connection (through my own preincarnate Cosmic Memory) to Frigg, the Queen of Asgard, through her name Saga (embodying the Power of Memory). At the time of that discovery, I created some new candles in her honor (one of which can be seen here).

Today, researching my ancestral genetic motherline, I came upon another connection to Saga ~

This map shows possible prehistoric entry routes of my maternal lineage (U5b1b-U5b1b1 in this image) into Fennoscandia. [source - The Peopling of Europe from the Mitochondrial Haplogroup U5 Perspective]

The paper Migration Waves to the Baltic Sea Region discusses mtDNA migrations from the Baltic Sea Region and states:

U5b and U5b1b1 were common in Karelia and especially among the Viena Karelians where U5b1b1 reached a high frequency 16.1%.

Here is a map showing where Karelia is located (for consistency and perspective against previous map):

Looking up Viena Karelia (where my maternal lineage reached high frequency), I found this interesting tidbit:

The birth site of the world renowned classic, the Kalevala, lies in the Viena Karelian villages, an area still surrounded by primeval forest. The Finnish national epic owes its existence to the folklore collected from the region´s unlettered peasants.

I think it's cool that my maternal lineage is directly connected to the preservation of a national folkloric epic "saga" and my spiritual connection to the Queen of Asgard is through her name Saga. Importantly, this thread of connection winding down to me around the scientific genetic evidence suggests to me that the transmission and actualization of my preincarnate memory is intimately connected to my ancestral genetic motherline.

Related - Urðarbrunnr

Hamingja - What Is It?

 What is Hamingja?

At its most basic, this is a person’s luck. More specifically, it is “family luck”, meaning that it is is inherited through the family line. Hamingja affects our wyrd. Rather than luck, which is generally how it is described by most authors, it may be better to think of it as personal spiritual energy, given to each one of us, through inheritance, going back to the original first people created by Odin.

Hamingja is sensitive to one’s actions in this lifetime. Righteous action has a positive effect upon a person’s hamingja, and feeds their energy. One’s hamingja can also be strengthened by daily devotions and other personal rituals. The rituals of the Year Wheel, so common to European pagan practice will also strengthen our personal luck reserves, as will living with the seasons. Energy raising activities such as blots, sumbels, and galdr can turbocharge your Hamingja for a little while – so can initiations. These are the spiritual equivalent of a dose of Red Bull.

As you go through life, be aware of hamingja, because its existence with your wyrd and ond is symbiotic. We will all screw up and do some rotten things from time to time. That is simply life. When we consciously strive to increase our hamingja by living true and by accepting responsibility for our actions, we will find that those trips off the path will occur less and less, as we attract better and better into our lives.

Loridi - Thor - My Wyrd Name is Lori

My hand forged Thor's hammer w/ oath ring (to hallow my Troth-claiming blot).

 Wow and wyrd!

Thor is an even older deity than Odin who came to Europe around the first century BCE. The worship of Thor is so archaic that he became a part of the Saami people's religion of northern Scandinavia, in Baltic Estonia and Latvian Livland. Thor was still worshipped among the Saami people during the 17th century ...

... (his name) was Loridi (my real name is Lori), who resembled his (her) father ... his son, his son (and more) ... his son was he is named Voden (Odin). 

Loridi means "the loud rider" and/or "the loud weather god" and is another name for Thor. My ancestral genetic motherline is U5b1b1, the foundational haplogroup of Saami motherline one. Perhaps I am a soul daughter of Thor as well.

Just how WYRD can a person's path get? What more amazing discoveries await me as I walk this path of my ancestors? I've only just begun ...

My Father's Real Name is One of Odin's Names

Though the family is not known in recent memory to have practiced Nordic Tradition Paganism, it is wyrd that my real father's name is Audra, a name passed down to him through his paternal line (with other males down the line also named Audra), often shortened to Aud. Aud, as a Norse boy's name, means "son of night" (related to Odin's Wild Hunt). The full name Audra (Norse Odr) is connected to a name of Odin, namely Óðr.

"Odin" is generally accepted as the modern English form of the name, although, in some cases, older forms may be used or preferred. His name is related to ōðr, meaning "fury, excitation," besides "mind," or "poetry."  

and

In Norse mythology, Óðr (Old Norse for "mad, frantic, furious, vehement, eager", as a noun "mind, feeling" and also "song, poetry"; Orchard (1997) gives "the frenzied one") or Óð, sometimes angliziced as Odr or Od, is a figure associated with the major goddess Freyja. The Prose Edda and Heimskringla, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, both describe Óðr as Freyja's husband and father of her daughter Hnoss. Heimskringla adds that the couple produced another daughter, Gersemi. A number of theories have been proposed about Óðr, generally that he is somehow a hypostasis of the deity Odin due to their similarities.

Related to its meaning as the "son of night", the name Aud is further connected to Odin and his nightime Wild Hunt:

As well as his role as oath-god, the one-eyed deity was also regarded by the Norse as the gatherer of souls, and to this end was responsible for leading the Wild Hunt on its nightime rampages across the sky.

UPDATE - Aud/Unn is also a Norse name which means "the Deep-Minded."

Asnat, Granddaughter of Yaakov and Who?

In trying to tease out Asnat's likely matriline genetic haplgroup, I note that Jewish tradition teaches:

Asenath is mentioned in the Torah as “the daughter of Poti-phera” (Gen. 41:45), who was married to Joseph in Egypt. The Rabbis found it difficult to accept that Joseph, who withstood the wiles of Potiphar’s wife and proclaimed his loyalty to the Lord in the palace of Pharaoh, would marry a non-Israelite woman. The question of Asenath’s origins has significant consequences for the standing within the Israelite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, the two sons born to Asenath and Joseph.

There are two Rabbinic approaches to the issue of Asenath’s descent. One view presents her as an ethnic Egyptian who converted in order to be married to Joseph. She accepted the belief in the Lord before she was married and raised her children in accordance with the tenets of Judaism. The second approach argues that Asenath was not an Egyptian by descent, but was from the family of Jacob. God directed matters so that she would end up in Egypt, so that Joseph would find a suitable wife from among the members of his own family. Accordingly, Ephraim and Manasseh are worthy descendents, who continue the way of Jacob. 

As we've seen in previous posts, given the ancient genetics of North Africa, it is unlikely that Asnat carried a Native African mtDNA haplogroup, even if she was an Egyptian. In fact, the long 400 year sojourn of the ancient Hebrews in Egypt as told in Torah, highly suggests that the Divine had some very important truth hidden there, in Egypt. This long heavy sojourn in Egypt which came about AFTER the time of Yosef and Asnat has a secret hidden in it - but I will get to that, bear with me.

Rabbis have grappled with the maternal descent of Asnat, suggesting that she was the daughter of Dinah (Dinah herself the daughter of Jacob by Torah and putatively by Leah by the Rabbis' conjecture) who was raped by a non-Hebrew. According to the Rabbi's thinking, the sons of Leah wanted to kill Dinah's half-blood child (Asnat), but instead they shipped her off to Egypt. This doesn't make sense to me. I can't see strong matriarchal Leah allowing her sons to do this to her granddaughter. This explanation by the Rabbis is not congruent with the reality of the strong personalities of the matriarchs. More likely, I think, is that Dinah was indeed the daughter of Jacob and some other unnamed woman, and that, like Sarah did with Hagar and Ishmael, Leah wanted to get rid of Dinah and her unnamed mother. Dinah's rape by a non-Hebrew gave Leah the political opportunity to advance her wish to exile Dinah and her nameless mother. This makes more sense - a woman's jealousy catalyzed Dinah's (and her nameless mother's and ultimately Asnat's) exile to Egypt rather than did male hatred of a helpless female infant (who wouldn't inherit anything anyway, unlike Joseph). Like Sarah didn't want to share her son's inheritance with Ishmael, neither did Leah want to share with Dinah's unnamed mother (who likely had no sons at this point, only a daughter named Dinah) her status as a mother of Israel. Sharing her status with her half-sister Rachel was bad enough. Leah would tolerate her half-sister (maybe - what exactly was the cause of Rachel's long bout with barrenness, an ancient anti-pregnancy potion not really made of Leah's famous mandrakes?), but she wouldn't tolerate another woman (just as Sarah wouldn't tolerate Hagar, although clearly, the Divine brought this nameless woman into the fold as a Matriarch of Israel despite Leah's attempt to exclude her from it). This makes perfect sense.

If my more likely explanation of Asnat's status as a Hebrew daughter of Jacob (and some other unnamed woman) is true, then the mystery opens up in our understanding in an even more revealing way - to enable us to possibly discover the original genetic matrilines of the ancient children of Israel. First, we must recognize, that in Torah, the Divine does not instruct Dinah's mother to return to the Hebrew tribes to be under the thumb of Leah (as was Hagar with Sarah). Instead, Dinah's mother and her daughter Asnat, were allowed, like Joseph, to go to Egypt and to be protected there. While there, Jospeh and Asnat hook up with destiny. Interesting story, this story, I think.

Importantly, given the way Asnat and her unnamed mother have been treated by tradition - the unnamed mother unrecognized as a Matriarch of Israel in her own right to this day (which I hereby rectify on behalf of my ancestors in the name of Asnat) and Asnat as a legitimate daughter of Israel - coupled with the 400 years of slavery in Egypt suffered by the children of Leah who lived in Goshen perhaps because of this lack of recognition, makes me think the Divine was trying to make a strong point, which never actually seemed to penetrate into the ancient thinking of the children of Leah. Even the Divine knows when take on another strategy for working it into recognition, as clearly that exile wasn't working. Even today, the strange ancestry of Moses troubles the minds of the children of Leah as to why Moses, with his strange Hebrew-Egyptian connections (like Asnat), was chosen by the Divine to lead the ancient Hebrews out of Egypt. Asnat was the (adopted?) daughter of a Egyptian priest, as Moses was the (adopted?) son an Egyptian princess. Coincidence or the working of wyrd?

In the counting of the Omer at Tel Shelmesh, Asnat is associated with hod shebetiferet – hidden truth:

Asnat is hidden in Potiphar's home to save her life. She receives this compassion because although she was born from a cruel act, she is a pure soul. Later, in spite of the secrecy around her birth, she discovers ways of honoring all the pieces of her identity. Hod can signify hiddenness, and tiferet can mean truth. Asnat is hod shebetiferet – hidden truth. We are most like Asnat when we open to the secrets of our past and allow our truth to be revealed.

How appropriate this speaks for the Matriarch, Asnat.