Whispering Wyrd

A Moment That Changed Everything

Back in 2011 something happened that altered the course of my life and quietly anchored the animist way I now understand the world.

I have sleep apnea, and at that time I didn’t yet have a CPAP machine. Falling asleep on my back has always been dangerous because it worsens the collapse of my airway. Normally I would jolt awake gasping, my throat opening enough to save me. But that night didn’t go the way nights normally went.

I woke because my throat had sealed completely shut. I tried to inhale but I couldn’t. My lungs were burning, my heart was pounding and racing and my head throbbed. My vision narrowed into a tunnel of darkness. I knew I was passing out and I knew I was in trouble. I was panicking.

I fell back onto my back as the world turned black, and my vision now shrinking to a single pinpoint. Time felt like it folded in on itself, a few seconds stretching out into what felt like an eternity.

And then something seemingly impossible happened.

The Golden Symbol in the Darkness

Out of that blackness, something came flying toward me so fast it was frightening. A flaming, golden symbol I had never seen before. It grew rapidly larger, flying straight at me. Just as it slammed into my body, my airway opened and air flooded in. I was sucking air like I never had before.

Maybe I lost consciousness, maybe I hung on by a thread, I don’t know. I can’t say for sure. But I bolted upright gasping, drinking in air like I had just been saved from drowning.

The next morning, that symbol was still definitely in my thoughts. I had to find out what it was, if anything. This was around the time Google had released its new “search by image” feature, so I opened GIMP, drew the symbol I had seen, and uploaded it. The result amazed me when I read what it meant.

It was the Ansuz rune. The rune of divine breath. The rune of divine communication. A rune closely associated with Odin.

I didn’t even know what runes were in 2011. This was before the series Vikings was on TV, before runes were all the rage and pop-culture décor. But this rune, the rune tied to breath and spirit, is the one that appeared in the very moment I could not breathe and was rapidly fading. I don’t try to find an explanation anymore. It happened and I’m alive because it did.

A Pathway Opens

That experience sent me exploring the cultures who used these runes. The Scandinavians, the continental Germanic peoples, the Anglo-Saxons, and the ancient Dutch. I learned their myths and stories and about their gods like Odin/Woden, Thor/Thunar, and many others.

But I never came to see those gods as distant, abstract beings, not the way the Christian god of my childhood was presented. Instead, I saw them through my already-rooted animist lens. Thor/Thunar isn’t only a god of storms, he is the storm, or its raw power. Odin/Woden isn’t merely a god of inspiration, he is the current of inspiration itself.

The runes, too, are more than symbols to me. They aren’t just representations, they embody the things they represent.

So when Ansuz slammed into me that night and my breath returned, I took it as an actual encounter, woven into the fabric of my own consciousness and lived experience.

Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Living World

Almost my entire life I’ve believed that there is more to this universe than what can be seen or measured. I don’t think consciousness is just a side effect of brain tissue. To me, consciousness is as fundamental as gravity or electromagnetism, a basic property of reality itself.

Some scientists call this view panpsychism or scientific panpsychism. The idea that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the cosmos, not an accident or some “afterthought”.

So when I sit in the mountains and a deer watches me, or a raven tilts its head toward me, I feel consciousness meeting consciousness. I feel agency looking back. Spirit looking back.

They aren’t just “biological machines,” not to me. And that gives me great comfort.

May breath return gently to your body whenever the world grows dark.
 May symbols rise to meet you in the moments you most need them.
 May the living cosmos speak to you in its quiet language,
 and may you always recognize yourself in its voice.

~ Buck