First of Sunwait and Veterans Day

[ivyskeep]

I celebrated the first of Sunwait this week in anticipation of Yule. This modern practice starts six weeks before the winter solstice and focuses on the first six elder futhark runes.

I understand it's a contested holiday in some circles. I'm not a reconstructionist, so I'll leave that for others to argue about. It's a moment of peace in a chaotic world. I feel that honoring the gods whenever I can is a good thing. It's not just devout Christians that find the growing secularity of this time of year distracting. Celebrating Sunwait helps me focus.

As Veterans Day was yesterday, prayers for the military dead were given as well as for those still living and a small monetary donation to my chosen veterans organization. 

Comments

[weofodthignen]

From your link, Sunwait observances started in Scandinavia? I am not so much a reconstructionist—the more you know, in my experience, the more you're aware of how much intentional and unintentional obfuscation hides from us what the ancient heathens did by way of observance—as an essentialist. I honour the heroes, and those who went before me, but for me heathenry is first and foremost about the gods and goddesses. The cycle of nature is part of that—after all, it's all their gift—but I'm too numerically challenged to map when the days should be, so I've fallen back on the equinoxes and solstices and other days such as Hallowe'en and Remembrance Day as an aid. And the amount of "nature worship" in what Forn Sed Sweden and even the Ásatrúarfélagið do is not my way, in large part because of the male-female dualism (which also mucks up a lot of Scandinavian scholarship on heathenry, from my perspective) and secondarily because down here in more temperate latitudes (and especially in California, where I've wound up), the dark months aren't particularly dark. Even in Scandinavia, the lights shine out from everywhere all season, not just on the days of permanent dark, and in most places Sunne casts light for part of the day, with that wonderful highlighting effect from her being low in the sky. In the early hours here, as I try to write, I sneak peaks at Geirangerfjord; sometimes it's snowing, or raining, but often in the early afternoon, Norwegian time, there's the valley laid before me, with cloud-dapple on the slopes or with the storm layer hanging just over the high vantage point, and the dark waters of the tip of the fjord; they froze and have unfrozen in a recent warming spell. At the same time, yes, this season of the year, stretching well into January, is connected with remembering the dead as well as with the joys of family and hearth and the military/personal campaigns of winter. (I don't do sigrblót as such, but those involved in campaigns for social justice or simply the preservation of democracy undoubtedly should.) What works, works. I just don't have so much of a lack of light here in southern climes, and even when I was in Duluth, it was more a lack of warmth and the depth of the night before the sun climbed high enough to cast her gold.