Hero’s Journey. 0 Stars. Do not recommend.
I accidentally took a shaman’s vision quest.
I used to be really into Jane Fonda — that’s the aerobic “get physical” craze for you younger folks. I was so into Jane Fonda I’d do the entire 2 hour routine without breaking a sweat, but still my mother told me I was fat.
I got into yoga. Did that for a long while. Stayed fat.
But in having to accept I’m just going to be fat, I’ve also noticed that not being physical creates other problems. And I like being physical. But I’m bored with exercise. I’m bored with yoga. However, I’ll never be bored with dance.
So I took to dancing every night before bed to various songs, especially the ones I’d created for The Heavenly Bride. And suddenly I could do a thing much easier that I’d always struggled to do before — I could connect to my “super powers”. I could connect to my split twin soul. I could connect to the other side.
It was fantastic. I couldn’t wait for 2 in the morning. I’d go, she and I would dance, we’d fly. We’d see things. We were one again…
Enter that damn fairy.
That damn fairy. With his big ass smile, his freshly dyed red hair, those damn sparkling gems of hynpotizing madness. His fucking charm.
She fell so hard for him, that I was carried with her. I would’ve died right then and there to go back into being her, to be with him. It was romantic. It was borderline cheating on my husband. It was captivating. It turned into a nightmare.
Suddenly my dances became a matter of survival, as over the course of weeks while time passed by years for her I learned more about domestic abuse and sexual control than ever I thought I wanted to learn. He knew I was there. He despised my presence. We had to dance in secret. She tried to give birth in secret. It was a downward spiral of grief and longing. Of hurt. Of trying to save myself.
Then he cut her/our wing. I learned a bit more about fey anatomy than I ever thought I wanted to learn, but the hard way. I learned what it was like to be human — so small and tiny, and mundane. Cut off from everything. It was the worst feeling in the world. I thought I was dying.
I danced my way to my old friends in the heavens, but no one would help me. I danced to my Peers to receive messages I couldn’t understand. I finally flew to Mengloth, the only other place I knew how to get to because I had been blinded. I was stumbling along the realms with my feelers spread like a blind man’s cane, going on intuition.
That was right where things had wanted me all along.
It was right where they’d planned for me the hour of my birth. Because you see, my true name. The one I never use. The one on my birth certificate. It translates directly to, “Pure Joy”. There is but one other entity with that name, as if I was marked. And I was going to him whether I liked it or not.
I unfurled all of my wings for the first time in over 2 lifetimes. I rediscovered that I am the fastest. I beat Hermes in a race (but he probably wasn’t even trying). I endured drinking from a never ending cup of red… something or other. I was stabbed in the heart by an athame of sharp light. My wings were cut away to regrow. I wrote songs and poetry because they began to pour from my soul in ways I had missed.
I fled from angels, threatened them with my sword, warned them away. I flew to Hecate to receive a necklace and a drink from her cauldron. I flew to Freyr to rant before the gods. I flew to Frigga to plead for my other half. I was welcomed by valkyrie. I flew. I flew. I flew.
Imagine longing for home, but finally that fades as you make a place where you are. Imagine that memory of home which always set you apart has faded to the point that you wonder if it was just a pipe dream, a means to escape from the cards life had given you. Imagine realizing it’s real, that you used to be able to touch it when you danced, and now it’s been taken from you. Only this time the pain is unenduring.
Imagine now trying to throw yourself into Saturn because that was the only way you could imagine your future.
You promised to maintain grace in exchange for your wings, you remind yourself repeatedly while flitting here and there, trying to save something of yourself. Trying to salvage the hope you’d held for over 30 years. So you dance with Loki and accept the drink he offers and blush from his kiss on your cheek. I was too old to be swayed, I told myself, but I knew I was lying.
I turned to anyone I could find for guidance as I navigated this foreign culture that threatened to take me up and hoard me away. I was called “whack-a-do” by a high gothi. I got no response from others who might have provided insight. The farther I flew, them more lost in space I became. The more isolate. The more alone. Which I’d always known I’d end up as someday.
Mimir tried to explain but I could not hear. So he gave me a red and white artifact. Look at it one way and it’s a loom, like the kind that I used to weave on back when life was better. Back when I’d fix my father’s nets. If you look at it the other way, it’s an abacus such as the kind that damn fairy had in his office.
Heimdall only said, “Go with honor.” The next morning I woke up to a yellow-kilted spirit screaming at me, “I don’t care if it’s ---- religion! I want to know if you’re fit for the job!”
What job? I wasn’t trying to get a job. I was trying to find my way home. To feel reconnected. To find that place I’d carefully crafted again; the one that I wrote my comics from. The one that brought me joy as I, smiling, planned dialogue or created panels for the page.
The dam broke. My twin has the grace. She is the divine feminine. I’m something else. I’m that thing my mother’s sister was sure to call hated. I am broken. I am fire. I am irreverent. I get fed up.
I stormed Frigga’s hall. There in front of all the gods, I went unseelie. I didn’t know I could unseelie. But that I did, with black vines twining around them and Frigga revealing her beautiful face as I screamed into her eye and tears poured down my face and waterfalled from my chin. And when they tried to leave? I called out their cowardice, dug into their world, and I stayed. This while telling them there was nothing they could do about it.
Frigga gave me the shuttle to her loom. And I got to choose.
Brigg yelled at me over wine.
I got sick. I am still sick as I write this. Suddenly one day I was immediately well, and I could hear his call. My namesake. It was gentle. Careful. “If you want to.” Very well. I would go.
I flew to Odin’s hall. There, when he showed me his face, I tried to give him comfort. In return he gave me a plushie. Look at it one way, it’s a torch and flame. Look at it another, it’s a stylized drop spindle. It’s crimson red. The wood part is complementary brown.
Then I sang shyly for them. I danced for him. Loki danced with me, doing an orbit, until I stood by Braggi’s side. He played his harp to go with my song. I could hear my cracked, sick voice echo from the hall’s vast ceiling.
After all that. You’d think they’d have the grace to make me better. But as I said before I’m still sick.
On a youtube video, someone says we should not place so much emphasis on the gods. I have always agreed with that. Still do. The youtuber also states that people are lucky to meet the gods.
I fucking met all of them in some form or another, even if it was just to stare at me as I was trying not to waddle down the path to Frigga’s seat.
That wasn’t luck. That was a fucking trap.
The price I’ll pay is to be forever alone in some way. Oh, there will be people here and there in my life. I’ll never be able to fully connect. But then again I never could before all this. I was prepared in advance. So I talk about things in my podcast. I try to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do. I cough up a new lung every hour.
Hero’s Journey.
0 Stars.
Do not recommend.
… The Rock then cracks the Mirror… the illusion fades… the circuit is cut. Back to Reality… back to work.
Flit.
)