III.4

Wyrdworking : Combing the Threads

236-44

p. 236

"Urd {Urd}, Verdandi {Verdandi}, Skuld -- They demand no worship ... . See yourself, a thread wound through Their tapestry ... . Where you surface above it, that is your birth, wound with that of the parents who bore you ... . ... Perhaps it gradually shifts color as it goes on. Perhaps the place where it dips again {into death} below the surface {of life} is already set".

p. 237

"If you are a spirit-worker, you have already moved to the fated side of the path. Perhaps not completely -- there is a continuum between part-timers ... and the walking Dead who must do as they do or die entirely --but to engage with the Gods and wights .., this ties your Thread down. Their {the Deities'} Threads are larger, longer, heavier tha yours; your tiny mortal strand is borne down beneath the weight of twisting with theirs."

p. 237

"Wyrdworking, or reading (and affecting) people's Wyrds or destinies, has been a mainstay of ... the vo[,]lva[-]s ... called forth to read people's fates while in trance, ... and saw an entire lifetime ... . ... To see a person's Wyrd ... is to see in vivid color what obstacles lie on their path to their

p. 238

destiny. At best it is to see that goal in its entirety and describe its path to them.

There is no doing of any kind of Wyrdworking unless you have a reasonable relationship with the Nornir. ... If you ever received any information about anyone's Thread [of Wyrd] ... you got it by Their leave, because They chosen to give it to you."

p. 239

"we should be used {accustomed, inured} to being forced with things {ethical consequences} coming back around quickly, and really its good for us spiritually. ... There might be other reasons to speed up Wyrd ... . ... It may be that the person {client} who comes to you is wandering about lost, unable to find their {his or her} path, and divination shows that they are actually ready to walk it, just lost. It may be that some other things are interfering with their path, things ... to be covercome ... . This must be done ..., and the results must be explained to them first -- that all their {ethical} debts will come due in rapid order, and there will be a time of clearing-out, after which clarity may be achieved. If they consent -- perhaps out of desperation ... -- ask the permission of the Nornir and see if They will allow it.

If it is to be allowed, go into trance and find their Thread. Hook it to your own, and begin to twist your own Thread tighter and tighter. ...

p. 240

The twist will travel from your Thread to theirs. Then ..., let it untwist. As it reaches the moment of straightness, before it begins to twist the other way, break their Thread off of yours and let them both spin in isolation. You will have achieved a speeding up of Wyrd for them -- and for yourself as well."

p. 240

"see if your gift is even accepted. ... If you get a positive reading, go do some utiseta and see if anything happens. ...

Some people start with their own Threads; others aren't allowed {by the Nornir} to see or work with their own. Still, a Thread that is well wrapped with yours -- lover, child, parent, close friend -- is a good place to start. ...

p. 241

If you start with a loved one, it's best to let them know that you use them in this way, because you're going to get glimpses of their Thread in the process. ...

Then ..., you switch to finding the Thread of your client, calling it by name. ... If you can't find it, call on the Nornir and ask for their help in sorting through. ... Then I run the hand of my hame along their Thread ... and look for tangles, knots ... . ... Touch the tangle or knot, and you should get some kind of information coming to you about what caused it. ... Don't get any idea about ... unknotting their Thread. ... . ... it is not your orlog to fix the Threads of other people ... . ... By interfering, you rob them of the chance to earn maegen of their own by solving their own problems. Your job is to find out what is wrong, and to give them the best possible information

p. 242

on how they can set things right ... . ... Some people come into this world with knots and tangles already in their Threads, either from the deeds of their ancestors ..., or their own deeds from past existences. ... There is nothing that cannot be put right".

p. 242

"all the women in her family went inexplicably mad ... . ... Since she was skilled in trance, I drummed her there {thither, into Fae:ryland} to find things out. It turned out that an ancestor {ancestress} on a small island off the coast of the British Isles had bargained with the local fairies to get her children and herself safely to America when the land was confiscated, and then never paid the debt [to the the fae:ries]. It {the debt} was turned over to her unwitting daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters, who had no knowledge of it, but who still bore

p. 243

the brunt of not paying it. Standing by a bonfire while I drummed, she asked them how to pay the debt, and got her answer, which was complex but still within her power to perform."

"For most or all of these remedies, while the action is important, the attitude with which it is done is far more so. ... A sacrifice offered with the wrong attitude does not count, and may have to be done over again in worse circumstances."

p. 243

"Wyrdworking is a part of the art of Sacred Mending, in that it can be used to ... set things [a]right. It can help people to ... increase their maegen, gain hamingja, and find the path of their Wyrd."

p. 244

"by aiding people in untangling themselves, you aid the world in becoming less snarled. Remember that fixing the Threads [of Wyrd] is ... best done ... by taking action ... that reverberates across them."

III.5

Luckworking : Dance of Hamingja

245-58

p.

ord.

luck

245

1st

"karmic luck -- ... one could call it Wyrding luck -- something done in this lifetime or a past one that gave you gifts or obstacles, usually set in such

246

a way [as] to aid you in doing something that you ought to do, or conversely prevent you from doing something that you shouldn't. Wyrding luck is the hardest of all to work with, since it is ... about ... actually understanding a lesson".

[comment by L.H. :] "we go look to see if there's any particular wight ... or entity actively harassing this person. It might be something ... with the local boggarts {bug-a-boos} that his great-granddad had started ... . Then you can make a diplomatic mission about remedying that insult."

2nd

"astrological luck. ... There are propitiations and remedies that can be done in these cases".

247

3rd

"locational bad luck. ... Some places are just bad juju for some people".

[comment by A., seidmadr :] "It's as if your energy clashes with the land-wight's energy. ... If you're living on ancestral land -- and most of us aren't -- you may be able to get you ancestors to intefere and protect you. But if it's just a house ... that you bought, sell it ... . If you're renting, get ... out."

4th

"inherited luck ... . ... Inherited luck can run out, especially if it's abused or overused ... .

248

... One of the most difficult things that I've had to tell the occasional client was that their {his or her} luck was gone. Used up . ... A few folk in that situation actually considered suicide rather than learn to adapt ... . ...

We all know families with terribly bad luck. I was born into one, so I know it well myself. ...

{Evidently there is much advantage in having such ill-luck, for it can induce a subject to study principles and practices of the praeternatural arts in order to cope.}

A period of luck in someone's life can end suddenly if that luck is abused. ... Abusing luck isn't about relying on it too much -- while that has its own danger ..., it doesn't count as abuse per se -- it's about not sharing it. Luck is fed by generosity, ... through the virtue of hospitality."

249

5th

Hamingja ... . ... The simplest way to start earning hamingja is to offer yourself to a community of people. ... Look at those folk, the ones who see you regularly, who[m] you care about, who care about you. ... Would they go to the wall for you? That gives you hamingja, and you need to earn it. While it's not easy to come by, hamingja is a fairly stable kind of luck. ... Bridegrooms paid a bride-price

250

for their brides not because they were "buying the woman", but because they were reimbursing the bride's family for their hamingja-loss. Often, the bride-price would be expected to be paid ... in hamingja-laden heirlooms from the bridegroom's family".

6th

"good luck that comes as a divine gift, and the bad luck that's the flip side is the wrath of the deity in question, or another one".

251

7th

"Trickster luck. Here in America, most pagans refer to it as heyoka {which is a Sioux term} luck ... . This is a particular kind of luck bestowed by people who work closely with Trickster deities ... . Trickster luck is probably the strongest temporary form of luck in existence; it's like an incredibly powerful probability-warping field around the individual who is so blessed. ... Being beloved by a Trickster [deity] can bring you amazing luck ... . ... People with trickster luck instinctively learn not to question it, [nor] scrutinize it too closely ... .

The (often bizarre) actions that feed Trickster luck are done impulsively, completely off the cuff, and then the person spins away to the next thing without looking back, or explaining themselves to the bewildered onlookers. Like faery glamour, looking to closely at the process ruins the luck. Of course, they have to be very tapped into that energy (which usually means a link with a deity) so that they will just automatically "know" which bizarre

252

action to take, without considering it. ... Like the Trickster himself [e.g., "Loki" (p. 251)],

Trickster luck comes and goes without warning, and cannot be summoned or invoked."

{In order to stabilize this luck, it may be necessary to belong to the Heyoka Society (among the Sioux, or to an aequivalent Secret Society of sacred clowns in Pueblo tribes).}

p. 252

"A rarer and far less flamboyant type of luck is one that we name after Andvari the Duergr {Dvergr}. ... Those with Andvari luck develop a very special relationship to money, responsibility and resources. ...

p. 253

This type of luck ... involves acknowledgement that ... this money ... you are only holding for others, and .... it is not yours to keep, even if you have so little you can barely exist. ... One gains this type of luck ... by approaching Andvari with an honest plea ... for assistance. This will come with a geas. ... In the Jotunbok, there is a story about Loki['s] going to visit Andvari with money ... . Andvari wouldn't take that money ... . ...

p. 254

Luckworking, in general, needs to come with a program to help the person change their {his or her} life. ... If someone wants to change their {his or her} luck, every part of their life and values needs to be scrutinized. ... Do they share their wealth, or hoard it? How generous are they ...? Can they be relied on to help out when called upon? ... It's difficult to change people's luck, because it's difficult to get people to change their lives."

p. 256

"The Nornir are choosy {selective} about who[m] {among mortals} They work with. ... Generally, the teaching has to be brokered by your {one's} patron deity. ... There's also [the fact] that the Norns {Nornir} don't exactly communicate in straight sentences. This is something that others {likewise} have noted.

It's unclear why. I'm sure that They are quite capable of it, but They prefer to communicate in images and cryptic words. ...

{The reason why is that the Nornir are actually communicating with the internal mind-deities who reside within, and control, the consciousness of mortals; which internal mind-deities can better understand, assimilate, and utilize such "images and cryptic words". [Such internal mind-deities are known to Taoist and to Vajra-yana metaphysics.]}

Truthfully, ... They take on {as disciples} very few people -- and that includes spirit-workers ... . .... I worked for the Norns twice ... . ...

p. 257

I would lay {lie} down and go into trance, and almost immediately I would have the sensation of falling from a great height toward the huge tapestry that is Their Work. It was so immense that I could only focus on a tiny piece of it at a time; its multicolored expanse stretched away in a curve like the rim of a planet that I was diving at. Each time, I landed on my own Thread, because They wanted me to start there. I was told to look for Threads that were attached to mine, or wound around it -- my partners, my child -- and study them ... . I was told not to look forward ..., as ... the future was not entirely set and to look at it might change things for the worse. ... Then I was told to look at Threads that merely crossed mine ... . Some barely touched ... . This is what I would be looking for in a client, and if they {he or she} were sitting in front of me I could use my own Thread as a reference point, since we would be crossing each others' paths at that moment. I was told to follow it as it wove along the surface, crossing other Threads ..., but somehow the Threads managed to cross each other ... without going beneath the surface if the fabric, which would mean ... deaths -- and look for tangles and knots. Then I could "land" on that Thread and touch that knot or tangle, and "see" the" problem.

Then came the next part -- how to solve it. ... There was a vague and tumultuous vision (most of Their instructions ... came in the form of ... brief and intense flashes of

p. 258

vision) of blindly pulling on something ... which pulled on something below the Weaving ..., and having part of that Thread recoil and wind around mine ... . ... A hand around mine ... and my hand was wrapped around the knot and thrust beneath the surface. It was like sticking my hand into

icy water,

{cf. the "ice-cold sea" of Heim-dall (according to the Hyndlu-ljo`d)}

and it hurt. Then, slowly ... a vision came of the individual {client} doing some action, or series of actions ... what they {he or she, the client} should do to unwind that knot. ...

The second lesson of the Norns, I cannot write about. They won't let {allow} me".