Please excuse the sawdust…

If you’re visiting this blog and finding most of the posts to be gone, or if you’ve tried to visit my Chambers of the Heart site and discovered that it isn’t there anymore, don’t panic.   Yes, both the blog and the site are soon to be located elsewhere, and yes, there will be a significant change in direction for both, from a more personal, “spiritual journey” approach to a  more businesslike professional writer’s site and a blog featuring  more polished essays.  This year I’ve decided to start giving my writing career the energy and attention it deserves, in addition to getting serious about launching my Divine Dolls business, so the website and blog will both be moving in that direction.  More personal posts will be found at my Livejournal, and as a trade-off I’ll be making more public posts there too (though anything truly personal will still be friends-locked).

I’ve been working hard on the new site, but it isn’t quite ready for unveiling yet.  Watch this space for the announcement and link, hopefully within a few days.  Hope to see you there!

- Valgrind

Wild Hunt playlist

For some of these, I posted embedded YouTube links during the twelve days of high Yule, so that my readers would be able to play them right here without having to go searching for them.  (Sometimes it was a challenge to find a suitable version to link to, and in certain cases, this was why a song was not featured.)  In any case, I did promise to post the entire list, and here it is:

1. Christmas Eve in Sarejevo, Manheim Steamroller
2. Don’t Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
3. Furious Angels, Rob Dougan
4. Ride of the Valkyries, Wagner
5. Gingerbread Coffin, Rasputina
6. Hunter’s Kiss, Rasputina
7. Goodnight Moon, Shivaree (This conjures up the jumpy, paranoid, thin-veil feeling of Yule very effectively, for me.)
8. The Sickness, Disturbed
9. Riders on the Storm, The Doors
10. Odin’s Song, Karl Donaldsson
11. Pursuit, Icon of Coyle
12. Hollow Hills, Bauhaus
13. When the Falcon Flies,  Hagalaz Runedance
14. Zeit nach dem Sturm, by Faun
15. Hagal,  Wardruna
16. Joupolle Joutunut,  Hedningarna
17. Wo die Wilden Kerle wohnen by Allerseelen (I couldn’t find a version of this to post, but it’s an awesome song for Frau Holle,  very evocative of Her.)
18. Woodpecker from Mars, Faith No More
19. Nachts: night weaving silently through the woods,  Joachim Raff
20. Christmas Mourning, October Rust
21. Hunter, Bjork

A few of the above were suggested by my friend Dver, who compiled her own list in preparation for our Wild Hunt mumming.  I’m sure my list will continue to evolve in years to come, as I continue to explore the Hunt mysteries.

And now we head towards Candlemas.  I hope your Yule was productive, enchanting, and revealing!

Odin figurine from Lejre, re-identified?

A friend forwarded me the link to this post.  Apparently, two months ago someone found a silver figurine of a person seated on a high seat surrounded by raven-and-wolf trappings and identified the piece as Odin…until someone else pointed out that the figure is wearing a dress and a necklace–in other words, obviously female.  A new ID of Freyja has been suggested, though for the record, my vote is that it depicts Frigga instead.  Grimnisal specifically states that She was the only one allowed to sit at Hlidsjalf besides Odin Himself–and if this is Her, how exciting, since there are so few images associated with Her, either ancient or modern.

(Yes, I know, in Skirnismal Freyr sits at Hlidskjalf–but He isn’t “officially” allowed to, even in the context of that lay, and positing Freyr would fly in the face of the conclusion that the figure is female.  I know the theory that this is Odin-in-drag will have its proponents too, but I’m sorry, I refuse to believe that the definition of ergi is that stupidly simplistic.  And Freyja is never mentioned, ever, as sitting in Odin’s high seat, which is what the raven-and-wolf trappings make pretty clear this is.)

Of course, it could just be depicting a regular human seidrhkona.  In that case though, this is clearly an Odin’s seidhrkona…which is just as exciting, from my point of view.