Caught in the Coils

Jormungandr is one of the stranger beings that I've worked with over the years, which is probably saying something rather significant given that I work primarily with a divine force foretold to devour everything between the earth and the sky.  Fenrir is all rage and learning restraint.  Hela has been all about wisdom and diplomacy.  But Jormungandr, well, Jormungandr is another beast entirely.

Jormungandr first made itself known to me about a year ago, when I fully committed to this Rokkatru association.  It wasn't something that I anticipated, or something that I sought out actively.  In all honesty, I never intended to reach out to the World Serpent.  I hate the idea of going into water deep enough for me to drown in, I don't swim, and frankly, I didn't see much to gain in the effort of trying to connect with the snake encircling Midgard.

The first encounter was heavy.  I mean that in the literal sense.  You see, Fenrir stirs the senses and makes everything I come in contact with more intense, Hela sends a full-body chill right through me when she reaches out.  The Rokkr are very blunt when they have a message that I need to pay attention to, and don't bother much with subtlety.  Jormungandr made me aware of itself by adding an immense weight on my shoulders, this sensation of suddenly bearing a massive burden.  That burden was quickly followed by the sensation of my entire torso being constricted (it wasn't, obviously, but the sensation was still there).

I've mentioned before what Jormungandr conveys to me in terms of symbolism.  Personally, I feel that its plight and its sentence as the World Serpent is one of self sacrifice.  It exists in a state of constant, maddening pain from self-inflicted injuries.  It knows that the time will come when it can no longer tolerate the pain and will release its hold on itself.  It knows that when that time comes, it will rise from the seas and wreak havoc upon the surface, spewing not only the venom from its fangs but its own poisonous blood into the air to black out the sun.  The part that gets overlooked, however, is that Jormungandr does not wish for this fate to come to pass, any more than Fenrir wants to rush into his own death.  They both know what will come, for it is inevitable, but they both wish to delay those final moments.

For me, Jormungandr is an Atlas-type figure, to draw on myths more familiar to most.  Jormungandr bears the weight of the world and holds the burden of knowing its failure will lead to its destruction.  Jormungandr lives in a state of suffering to stave off its own demise.  There is a fury in that futile existence, but underneath that fury is a unique perspective of understanding pain and suffering and conditioning oneself to endure.

The bulk of my work with Jormungandr has been devoted to trying to gain that same understanding.  My pain isn't the same sort that Jormungandr endures, obviously, nor is it physical, but when applying that spiritual knowledge to emotional and psychological pain, it's very much applicable.  After a while, you get used to the feeling of having no way out.  You get used to being stuck in a small town with no potential for improvement and not knowing how to get out of that cycle.  You get used to the idea of just existing in futility.  Jormungandr has helped me see that for what it is.  Jormungandr has shown me that maintaining that sort of existing isn't permanent, but it's what you have to do until you find a way out.

You have to maintain.  You've got to get through it, because if you don't, then what was the suffering really for in the end?  And when you compare that sense of being trapped, or of being depressed, or of being defeated with no hope of making something change... how can you compare that to the notion of Jormungandr's plight?  How can that depression compare to knowing that if you let go of your suffering, you bring about the destruction of everything around you, including yourself?

Jormungandr and I don't encounter each other often, but its wisdom will never leave me.

The Liminal Alchemist

There are moments in everyone's life that change their entire perception of reality.  We all have them, and we all have different reasons behind them.  It can be complicated.  It can be bewildering.  But most of all, it can be so life-altering that you find yourself wondering how you avoided it for so long.  It's a complex thing to witness that moment in total awareness, and another entirely to find that threshold and capture that moment.

Speaking from a very personal place, I've realized that I've been stood on the edge of the proverbial knife for months now.  I've been struggling to balance between being the healer and the warrior.  I've been struggling to balance between my emotions and my thoughts.  I've been struggling to balance between spirit and mind.  I've been struggling to balance between what I'm feeling and what an intense empathic connection is causing me to feel.

I feel myself in liminality.  It feels the way that I feel while will-working in a ritual mindset, but drawn out and twisted in a way where it's all so mutable and malleable.  I look back on the last few months, and I see so many points where I could have stepped away from this knife-edge balancing act, chosen one course of action over another, one side over another.  As much as I want to find closure, I find myself trapped in the between, because I've been unable to say that even the outcomes I do not desire are final.

It would be easy to dismiss it as being unwilling to accept that what I want is not meant to be, but that isn't the case.  What I want exists in a state of uncertainty, neither set in stone nor impossible.  The very concept lies in flux, and the road to get there requires me to practice my continuing path of personal alchemy while standing on the razor's edge.

I find myself caught between.  It is my nature to be the warrior.  I've always been the one to confront spiritual ills head on and drive them out, be it a spirit causing unease, emotional instability making matters difficult, or anything else of the sort.  My instinct when confronted with opposition that threatens my loved ones is to fight it with everything I have.  And yet now, I am called not to be the warrior, but to be the healer for someone that I care very deeply for.  I find that I must focus my energies on compassion and understanding rather than confrontation and removal.  I find that I am expected to restrain the part of me that has always been given to aggression in order to facilitate this part that thrives on mercy.

And yet the curious part, is that I realize that I cannot simply give myself over to the healer's path.  There are still challenges that lay ahead on this road that I've chosen that will require the warrior spirit to overcome.  Likewise with the other struggles I've got going on in my head.  I can't switch off my emotions (which is just about the most unusual sensation in the world for me) and let my thoughts run the show, because the few times I've tried, it's been like the worst chill I've ever experienced.  I can't separate my emotions from another's, either, because if I do, then my efforts as a healer are pointless.

So my efforts mustn't be to choose which side I will step to.  Instead, I will make my goal being to pull myself up to the middle path, above the liminal edge, and find the balanced road.