The Awakening

 Just about two years ago, on Labor Day Weekend 2018, I found myself in Salem, Massachusetts with a friend, staying at her sister-in-law’s apartment.  It was an old red brick Victorian building in town, not far from the water, and we’d spent the previous day walking around Boston, visiting historical sites.  I had been a history major after all, and my friend had humored me for that day so we could visit places like John Adams National Historic Site and the monument to the 54th Massachusetts.  I had really wanted to see that.  That day, not far from that monument, we’d wandered down some smaller streets to locate the African American National History site in Boston.  It was clearly a slow day for them, and it was not long from closing time when I arrived and asked if I could stamp my national park passport there as I’d visited the monument.  The man behind the counter gave me a curious look, but pointed out the passport stamp and inkpad behind me, and as my friend paused for a moment, I stamped my book.  

Before we left, the man walked over to me and asked where I might be staying if I was visiting the area.  I replied that we were staying in Salem that weekend, and the next day were planning on walking around and shopping in downtime Salem, seeing some of the sites there.  I said we were trying to stay away from anything too commercial, but wanted to enjoy some of the mystical nature of that town.  And I’d had a biological 10th great-grandmother go through the witch trials, and I wanted to see if there was more to know.

The man, Tobias, looked at me, and then gave me a card for a shop in town.  He then asked, “are you Asatru”?  I didn’t know what he was saying to the point that I had him say the word again.  I’d never heard it.  “Asatru,” he repeated.  I was still confused.  I had him spell it as I wanted to look it up.  The spelling didn’t quite seem to match the pronunciation.  I asked him what it was.  He said something about it being Norse, and I thought that was interesting, and banked that knowledge for later.  He gave me a card for one of the shops in Salem and wrote his name on the back.  “Tell them Tobias sent you,” he said, so I said I would.  He was a nice man, if not seemingly a little strange, and I liked the name Tobias - I’d remembered that name appearing in my favorite book series when I was in middle school, so it was nice to meet someone with that name after all those years.  My friend indicated that she was ready to leave, and so we set out that late afternoon and arrived back in Salem that evening.

We were getting dinner out when I’d remembered the word Tobias had told me.  “Asatru,” I told my friend.  She’d never heard of it.  While waiting for dinner to arrive at the table, I did a quick search online.  “Oh wow,” I said to my friend as I realized what he’d been talking about.  “It’s the Norse gods, except, it seems to be a religion of some sort.”  I scrolled through more information.  It was fascinating to see, but then the food arrived and I put away my phone for later.  That evening at the apartment, I looked again, and at the store’s website that Tobias had recommended.  They indicated they would have a book on Asatru.  I determined to pick it up the next day, as the whole subject was intriguing.  It was about the Norse gods and goddesses.  I’d always appreciated Greek and Roman mythology, and even studied some astrology, but for some reason really hadn’t read about the Norse.  For some reason I hadn’t been interested until that point.  

The next morning we walked through the town of Salem and we stopped at the store Tobias had indicated.  It was lovely, and everything but commercial, and I found the book I was looking for on Asatru.  I took it up to the clerk in front.  “Tobias said to stop by,” I told the woman at the counter.  “He told me about Asatru.  I looked it up and I’m intrigued.”  She glanced up at me with a curious look.  I told her I’d read the night before online and wanted to know more.  “Well, you know,” she said, “this is the religion with homework,” holding up the book.  “That’s fine by me,” I’d responded.  I’d loved school - I was a historian after all.  “I like homework.”   Additionally, the previous night I’d reviewed my ancestry page (I had been in Salem where my 10th great-grandmother had been), and then followed one of the longer ancestral lines I’d figured out months earlier going back to Northern Europe.  Something in all of this had resonated with something ancient.  (I’m going to pause here and say I’m not saying that people without Northern European bloodlines can’t study the Norse gods and goddesses - it’s just for me in that moment something had resonated.  Anyway, back to the story.). “I think my ancestry goes back to the Norse people,” I continued speaking with the clerk.  “Mine goes back to Frey,” responded the clerk.  I nodded, and for whatever reason we started talking about the gods/goddesses and she showed me information about Skadhi.  I said I would research her as well.  “Thanks for the help.”

Later that afternoon, my friend and I went to one of the small beaches in Salem.  I’m not one for the ocean, and opted to sit on a towel on the beach.  I’d brought the book with me, and I started reading.  I read some that afternoon, and then later that evening back at the apartment telling my friend how much the sentiments in the book just made sense.  They were just so natural.  A sense of wisdom, of virtue, or respect for the world around.  Had I been longing for something like this for so long?  Some sense of connection to an ancient past?  I mean, a historian always has some sort of longing for the past and the people of the past.  I don’t know which historian wouldn’t.  I wouldn’t trust a historian that didn’t.  (Also, my cat is named Herodotus, but I call him Otus for short.  He’s too young for his full name, anyway.  But connection to history is important to me.)  Finally, I was adopted as a baby, and about a year before that trip to Salem, I’d found my biological family, allowing me to fully research my bloodline.  As a historian, that was important, as I’d already researched fully my parent’s ancestry (what I call my familial ancestry). So any resonance about historical bloodlines was new for me, as I’d just recently uncovered the mystery of my past at that time.  Everything was vibrant, and something warmed my soul that night.

When I woke up the next morning I was the first one up in the apartment, and decided to take a quick shower - we would be leaving that day and I’d be making the drive back to Pennsylvania.  Stepping out of the shower I looked into the mirror which had partially fogged up with steam.  I stepped back, looked again, and stepped forward, looking again.  Through the mist in the mirror I saw something.  It was a skull, obscured by the mist.  I thought at the moment that was quite haunting.  There I was in Salem, having walked around a town my ancestors had been, and upon leaving, there was this vision.  I stepped back again - no matter what I did, my reflection through the mist looked like a skull.  I can’t say how long it took for the steam / the mist to fade and the mirror to return to normal.  But that vision stayed with me.  What did it mean?  Was I taking too lightly what I had seen in this town, or over the weekend?  Was something greater trying to let me know something?  Was this an omen?  I finished getting ready, my friend and I thanked her sister-in-law for the wonderful time in town, and we left.  I returned to my life in Pennsylvania.

Before leaving to go to Salem that weekend, I’d decided that it had been time to leave a six-year position as a church music director.  It had been a hard decision - I had worked there for years, but the schedule had become too much with my full-time job, and my heart wasn’t in it anymore.  If I’ve ever had a burn out at any point in my work, that was it.  Then I’d gone to Salem.  And somehow when I’d returned having met Tobias, with that book - that homework, with that vision in my mind of something I couldn’t yet understand, I knew that everything had changed.  Before going to Salem, I was leaving the church (as a job).  After I’d returned I knew deep down - I was really leaving the church.  And I knew it was the right thing to do.

That fall was difficult - my contract at the church didn’t end until the last day of the year.  Literally the last day of that year was a Sunday.  But that fall, aside from my responsibilities for the music, I stopped with the prayers.  I stopped with Communion.  I looked up at the front of the church and somehow slowly said goodbye to what I’d known all my life.  On that last day, when I went in early to clean up my things after years of work, and after that last service which had been a quiet one (the service after Christmas Day, when many were away with family), I looked up at the cross at the front.  I tried to, in that long look, to express what I was feeling.  This was the final goodbye in a very real sense to what I knew.  And then I left, and did not look back.

In January, having ended my responsibilities at the church, I went to a “Heathen Pubmoot” in the area (luckily, there were some in the area with which to meet) and on faith, I hoped they were good people.  They were.  I told them what had happened to me, and it was one of the best dinners and conversations I’d had in some time.  They gave me some good advice about meeting other Heathens in the area (Norse pagans, Asatru, Vanatru, and Urglaawe), and I followed it.

Later that spring another group of friends said they wanted to go to Salem.  I said I’d happily return and show them some of the places I’d been.  One of the friends said that they wanted to bring their moon cards and do some readings at the hotel where we’d be staying.  I said I’d bring a Viking Oracle deck I’d bought with me and attempt to do some readings with it.  I arrived in Salem a few hours before my friends and sat in my car and took out the deck.  I’d never drawn a card from it.  I shuffled the deck, and closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and drew one card.  It was Odin.  My heart fluttered in my chest.  Yes, I thought to myself, Yes, I’m supposed to be here again.

Odin.  He had sent multiple messages that previous fall.  He had sent his messenger in an unlikely place. “Change,” he said.  “You must change.  You must embrace.  The path you are on, without change from what has now been revealed to you, is not the way forward.”  Then there was vision in the mist, which now I believe to have been Nerthus, the veiled lady of the marsh, lady of the bog.  (That post is for another time.  I have so much to say about Nerthus and my every-growing connection to her.)  But the message in her vision as well had been to change.  To leave the path I had been on and go to a new one.

Odin, he was and is all around.  He’d sent a messenger, and I had responded to the message.  Something about drawing that Odin card in the parking lot months later just was the final moment of clarity, the final validation.  I was where I’d belonged, spiritually, after so many years of disconnectedness.  Odin had awakened me.  I have another name for him now, he who has already so many names.  The Awakener.  Isn’t that what he is for all of us?