From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 35
Content Warning: Dissociation/DID, childhood trauma, coercive power dynamics, spiritual abuse, trauma-related experiences, and spiritual themes involving deities, death, spirits, energy work, and spiritual bindings.
Odin led us to read many Pagan books about him and the other gods and devotions to them. We learned that our natural way of belief is very accepted in the Pagan community. There were people who would fully understand our spirituality and heart. And so we found community for the first time in our life.
This was on a long stretch away from our ex Dom. I muse sometimes that the gods kept him busy to help me and my system restore our choice in the matter. Odin took the lead with us for a little while, preparing us to be married to Loki. He spoke to us at daily coffee, and we really connected to Odin on the tree. We could understand his death deeply, and he helped us to see we were still up on our own tree and it was time to come down from there.
It’s a strange thing, when all you’ve known is extremes, coming down to earth and placing your feet on land can be very terrifying and overwhelming. Trusting calm seems the opposite to safety. It would take a while longer for us to make that ground. But Odin was there for all parts of me that needed a safe father to turn to. He connected with us at the cemetery, and for a few years two ravens followed us into the cemetery and out again on our visits, lifting our hearts.
We had started these visits as a devotion to Santa Muerte, and we were swiftly taught that a cemetery is an appropriate place to leave our grief without it stagnating in us and without it being harmful to others. We went there to grieve and to gain perspective anew. We went to connect with the dead of our land and honor cycles. We still do. And then Odin shared with us that he can walk death realms. He died, after all. We were very excited to learn this because we go between those realms by sheer survival instinct, and he was helping us not to feel ashamed for it. He called it death walking.
-Star
Hel came to us after we became less fearful of Saint Death and dying as a passage of life, and we could tolerate her presence then. She taught us that the copper collar was too strong to wear at our throat. It was painful to us energetically because copper is a natural transmuter of energy between spirit and our plane.
So, our ex Dom was really live-wiring us to his spirits right around the throat chakra. We now believe he wanted to block and maim our voice, and back then it was very hard to see, even with Hel’s help. Our third eye had bindings on it, programs we had to heal both on this plane and the spiritual plane, and that takes time.
-Lilith
