Whispering Wyrd

In my early life, I was, like many others, taught that the soul was a single thing, and that it would either be saved or damned forever depending on what I believed. That old teaching still leaves traces in my mind sometimes. It shows up as fear and dread, as a sense that I must cling to a particular belief in order to be safe and not tormented after death. Even now, I sometimes feel the echo of that childhood training… the idea that eternity hangs on believing the “right” things.

But as my life changed and I grew up, as I’ve come off drugs that clouded and muddied my inner world for decades, as I’ve spent these past months walking among juniper, sunlight, ravens, and mountains, something has shifted. I no longer feel that the soul is a single, brittle thing that can be lost. I don’t feel that we are here just to “pass a test”. Instead, I feel that we are part of the Earth, not metaphorically, but literally and spiritually.

My bones are made of minerals that once belonged to stone and soil.
My breath is the same air carried by ravens and pine needles.
The blood in my veins is the same water that flows in streams.
My warmth comes from the same sun that rests on the mountains.

Nothing about me is separate from the Earth.
So how could I ever truly be apart from it?

I have been thinking about the older, pre-Christian view of the self found among the early Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic peoples, my ancestors. In those times, a person was not understood as having one single soul. Instead, the self was seen as a weave, a living pattern made of several different parts, each with its own nature and its own destiny.

The body returns to Earth, just like everything does.
The breath returns to the wind and the wide living world.
The mind of feeling and memory lingers for a time, like an echo or a scent, before softening into the quiet.
The life-force, sometimes called hamingja, continues, shared among family, land, and those we touched with our lives.
The companion spirit, the fylgja, goes its own way, continuing its journey.
And the parts of us that are heavy, our pain, our sorrows, our unfinished stories, are held by Hel.

Not hell.
Not punishment.
Not fire.
Just the deep Earth.
The roots.
The quiet place where memories are kept until they can dissolve in peace.

To me, this feels true and real.

It feels like something my heart already knew instinctively, but had no words or language for.

It means that death is not a sentence of punishment.
It’s more of a return.

A softening.
A rejoining.
A remembering.

I no longer feel that I must cling to any particular belief to be safe.
Safety is already here right now, in the Earth that carries me, the breath that sustains me, the mountains that witness me, and the sky that welcomes every exhale.

Belief is not required.
Belonging is enough.

When I put my hand over my heart during times of fear, during those times when the palpitations rise and my old anxieties stir, I remind myself of something…

I am of the Earth, and the Earth is with me.

If I must return one day, and I will not be “cast out”.
I will simply go home.

~Buck