We didn’t have any appointments on Wednesday, so we decided to go early in the morning to our beloved mountain of Las Mercedes to make an offering, something we had been delaying for a while. We made a gofio ball with gofio, honey and milk and filled a small bottle with rum; we gathered scissors, knife and bags and headed to the mountain with our little dog, Baba, who comes with us on all adventures. Despite being very hot where we live, summer has not arrived to the mountains yet – it was cold and foggy. Fernando was ecstatic as it is his favourite weather.
The offering came first of all as usual. I wanted to collect a little moss to make a new terrarium, and maybe bring a stone or two: there aren’t many herbs to collect there as it is the type of forest where the trees take all the light. But, the Gods had something different prepared for us.
We went a little further than usual and found a beautiful fallen tree; I was called immediately to a hole among the roots. Fernando climbed over the huge roots and placed the gofio ball, poured the rum and made a rune with twigs below it. The rune is Fez/Fehu, the first rune of the Futhark, a rune of prosperity and wealth. He personally dedicated the offering to Frey and Freya, patrons of that rune, as he is becoming more and more involved with them in his Asatru work. I prayed to our Guanche ancestors – during the prayer, a sudden blow of wind brought a baptism of water drops falling over us from the trees’ leaves.
Fernando climbed down from the tree roots and we lingered a minute, while Baba was sniffing every inch of the forest ground. He looked at our feet and said “Bones”. I looked down too and realized that we had been standing over a dog skeleton all the time. Of course, we quickly grabbed our tools and started picking the bones. We knew we had been gifted a very powerful treasure, and that our ancestors and deities were pleased with the offering. The bones had been already inspected by other animals, as they were separate. The skull, almost intact, was found about a meter away.
Happy with our find, we walked a little more through the forest, mainly because we didn’t want to leave – and we did well, because we found TWO cat skeletons, not far away. They were not completely dry so we only gathered the skulls and a couple of bones, and we will look for them the next time we go. We had more than enough and I’m sure many little critters will benefit from the remains of those animals – we don’t want to the hand that takes everything when we’re in Nature. We will show pictures when the bones are clean.
When we left the mountain, we stopped at a couple of favourite spots to gather fern before summer dries it completely; we also found dandelions, thistle, fennel and nasturtium, and brought small plants of all of them to grow at our roof garden. Believe me, next time I’m making a dozen gofio balls!
The only downside was to find the dirty, disrespectful evidence of spellwork on several spots. Plates, bottles, bags and clothes, mostly. Stuff that won’t degrade, or go away, and that may even cause fire during the summer. I can’t imagine how the spirits can be willing to help people who behave like that. Sigh.
Read Full Post »
