Building a Morning Rite

CHOOSING FOOTWEAR

MORNING RITES

A daily rite doesn’t have to be elaborate or time consuming; one young poet I know begins her morning reading the poem of the day at Poems.com. This is a morning rite. A moment to focus, a time to stop activities and give honor to the journey you are undertaking.

To have something when you need it, you have to first gain it. There is a Rune, called Ingwaz. It is diamond shaped in one of its forms. I think of it as an egg, a sort of nest egg, where energy is held until it becomes full and ready to manifest. Ingwaz is a place of potential, a place which holds the stored energy you have collected. This energy can then be drawn on when it is needed. Each time you use prayer beads, light your candle, use incense, recite poetry or chants; each time you focus your intent and your Self during a rite, you are adding to this storehouse of potential.

                If you’ve done this for any length of time, you’ll notice a change in how you react to the world around you. You’ll notice problem-solving skills that you didn’t have before you began to build this potential. Your health will improve. Your outlook will improve. And you have a tool for those dark times which would otherwise overwhelm you. But that’s not really why you do it. You do it because it feels right and once you experience it, you want more. It’s a breath of air. It’s a drink of water. It renews you.

                You can keep your morning rite simple: light a candle, chant a mantra, or simply sit and allow your Self to realign, to come fully into you and into the day. You can also add to your life skills with the of use symbols, words of power, poetry, guidance gained from divination such as Runes, Tarot or I-Ching. You can use body or hand postures to create living talismans or containers of stored energy.

You can add mudras or hondstothur. These are signs made with the hands, much in the way of sign language. These hand postures serve as triggers to re-evoke those energies you’ve built through meditation. Hondstothur are associated with runes, each rune has a hand posture as well as a body position (some call it rune-yoga). Mudras are from Eastern traditions, but there is no saying you can’t use these on the Rune path, along with runic chants and mantras created with rune energies. It is from what you put into them, that the energy is drawn at a time of need, although each has its own storehouse of potential as well.

Each road has its own symbols. Some you may be acquainted with are the Pentacle, the Cross, and the Lotus. For the Way of the Handmaidens, the Spindle, the Hammer, even the Helm are not beyond our focus. I wear a spindle to honor Frigga and I wear a necklace portraying the glory twigs which contain all the runes. I also empower a Thor’s Hammer for protection. As with most things, you can build toward the use of any symbol, but much is inherent in them from repeated usage through the ages. The tokens associated with the Handmaidens are also symbols that will hold the power you instill within them.

You may want to add a blessing to your God or Goddess during your morning rite. I like to do this with poetry rather than drink offerings. Poetry is also Meade, just as the drink of honey wine is meade. This is told in myth in the Eddas.

Myths of the Gods and Goddesses give you clues of how to work with them and what empowerment they give. I call on Frigga and her Handmaidens in my morning rite. I’ve also called on Heimdal often as I learned the runes. He’s a very patient teacher. I know this because of a myth concerning his patience with a child who came to ask many, many questions. What we call from them, we have within us. Israel Regardie once wrote that, “We invoke Them from within and become what we invoke.” That’s my belief as well, that what is out there is also in here. Times of focus when I call on Goddess in one of her aspects, I am awakening this power in myself.

                I write chants and poetry for the Handmaidens, and I memorize portions of the Havamal, poetry by others, and words of power associated with runes. I have a book of Goddess poetry on which I also draw heavily for morning rites. Poetry is known to be one of the most magickal of all tools. Creating your own will often give you access to inner healing that nothing else will give. Using what has already been created and preserved in myth is also powerful The more poetically you can word your intent, the deeper and more lasting the impression on the inner field of potential.

Try an experiment in which you begin your day with a morning rite, however simple or complex you want to make it. Keep notes so you can see for yourself how much your life improves because of this.