Gathering Waters

Living in the suburbs, it’s not easy to find  nature spots. They exist, this I know, but I’m still looking for one close to home that feels right for me. However, I am blessed to have a daughter who lives on a farm in a house whose history stretches back over 150 years and that’s where I was the last couple of days.

While there were many reasons to come up, one reason was that I wanted water for my rituals. As a member of ADF, I use a well, a tree and fire in my rites. I have been using rain water captured during thunderstorms, which is good but I felt it was missing a bit. So I went out this morning to the creek behind the house. There’s an ox bow like meander with a tree that has a set of thick roots at it’s base where I like to sit. It’s peaceful, another plus. I took with me a liter jug and some oats as offerings.

I spent some time centering myself, feeling myself extend down into the earth and rise up to the sky. Then I turned to the tree. I silvered the creek with a small coin, asked the tree to assume the role of Yggdrasil, and asked the heavens to be the heavens. I called upon Garanus to act as gate keeper and opened the gates.

I called upon the local nature spirits and asked them to look kindly on what I was asking and put out oats for them.

I called upon the local river spirits to hear me and asked them if I could take of their water to use in my rites. Then, standing in the creek, I filled the bottle. I emptied part of it over the roots of the tree as a thank you to the tree and then refilled the jug.

I then asked the water spirits two questions.

In response to my question of whether they liked the offerings, I got Laguz: Water, hidden wealth, flowing. Since my rite was asking about using water, I took that as a very good sign.

In response to my question of what guidance they responded with Dagaz: Day, rising sun, new day, deliverance.

Then I thanked the water spirits and the nature spirits. I offered up the remainder of my oats to the nature  spirits and thanked Garanus for helping and closed the gates and took my jug of water, well pleased.

I also filled a jug from the tap, well-water. Wasn’t sure about a rite for that but I was very thankful as I did it. When I get home, I’ll mix the creek, well and rain water together for my rites.

Peace and blessings