Well it's that time. I guess I'll do more writing. I feel like it.
So I'm going to talk about rituals. I guess I'll start with the small.
I wear my Thor's hammer all the time. I don't think this really counts as a "ritual" per se, but I feel it is important to. My boyfriend gave it to me so maybe this is another reason I wear it all the time. It is made of bone, which is apparently uncommon in a hammer. Most others are made of metal. I will post a picture of mine later, when I find my camera.
We have two types of common "ritual", there is the blot (sacrifice) and sumbel/symbel (various spellings). I will talk about symbel in my next post.
The blot can be simple or complicated. I will describe a basic one. It consists of a few items that are needed. A bowl or vessel of some sort, a cup/drinking vessel, a branch of a coniferous tree (small, with needles) and earth. First one pours the offering into the drinking vessel. One offers the drink to the god(s) that one wishes, says some poetry, does a song, something like this if one wishes. It is passed around amongst everyone (unless you are the only one) and everyone (well, not always, sometimes it is just the important people) has a sip. Then the drink is poured into the bowl. The pine branch is dipped in (alternately one can use runestaves [longish sticks with runes painted on the ends, I'll take a picture of my shortish set]) and then the drink is sprayed upon the other people in attendance using the pine branch (like spraying paint with a paintbrush, perhaps). Then the offering is held up and poured into the earth.
This is how my godhya (female priest-type thing) taught me to do it. She does this type of research at university, so I don't know her sources...
Anyways, next time on Susi's beliefs theatre, there will be pictures of some of her various objects (hammer, runestaves, drinking horn) and a description of Symbel. How exciting!
