Getting an answer from the spirits/gods/ancestors

[Valdi]

Hi guys;

What does one have to do, or how would one know (or interpret) when/if they received an answer from spirits, the gods, one's ancestors, or something else?



What is it like? How do you know what is being said? How frequent is it?

[Jenett]

What does one have to do, or how would one know (or interpret) when/if they received an answer from spirits, the gods, one's ancestors, or something else?

What is it like? How do you know what is being said? How frequent is it?

Depends.

Which Gods? (or spirits, or ancestors?) What method (meditation, prayer, ritual, something like Drawing Down/possesory work?) Who's the person/people listening? (How I experience things is different than how many of my tradmates experience things.)

In terms of what I get in an average ritual year or so: (though not this year, which is atypical in practice in a number of ways.)

- Usually 1-2 times a month where I get a particularly clear impression of something the deities I primarily serve in my personal practice want to get into my head, outside of times when I'm specifically asking. (Some months it's higher. Some months it's lower).

- Roughly 1 in 2 times where I'm specifically saying "Hey, listening, help?" in some format - ritual, specific meditation with a particular focus. This is often not very direct, nor very clearly worded: it's often a "Go pay attention to that. No, really." sort of feeling, or often a "You need to reread that book" and somewhere in the middle, the reason why becomes obvious to me. This comes out to 0-3 times most months.

- 2-3 experiences of Drawing Down work wherein deity is invited to speak and act through the body of a priest/ess in a given year. These are often a lot easier to figure out what to pay attention to, but may still be quite cryptic. Sometimes they're quite blunt.

- And a certain amount of divination work, where I'm getting information, but the source is not particularly obvious.

I tend to be, in most of my life, very word/language focus. Most of what I get from deity and related work is very image focused. (And sometimes scent). This is a pain in the neck to try and decipher, but it's one of the things that tends to cue me in that it's something outside my normal reality trying to get me to pay attention.

As to how I evaluate them - I run them by the same set of evaluation I do for most things. Does this match up with common sense? What is the worst thing that could happen if I did this? What's the best thing that could happen? Which one's truly more likely? Does what I'm getting match up with other stuff from that source, or does it look/sound/feel/smell noticeably different? Is there any chance some other human could be manipulating the info? (Possible in a Drawing Down situation, not so likely in a meditation I'm doing on my own). Is there any chance *I'm* manipulating what's going on, consciously or subconsciously, to suit my preferences?

I also have some specific cues I look for - when being present at a Draw Down, there's one very particular phrase that comes up in legit draws - when that gets said, I pay a lot more attention because it's likely a much more solid Draw. When I'm doing meditation on my own, there are particular smells I pay special attention to, or visual details that I would not normally notice in my own general work.

(Oh, for example: in my own general meditation work, I've gotten to the point where I can tell you what a figure looks like/generally what they're wearing. In a situation where something beyond me is involved, I'm able to tell you in detail what the embroidery on the clothing looked like, or that this particular bit of hair was falling across their face at that precise angle.)

[Robertus_]

Depends.

Exactly this.

It depends on Who you're attempting to contact. In my experience the Lord and Lady contact me in extremely subtle ways so just keep an eye out.

[Valdi]

It depends on Who you're attempting to contact.

What if you're keeping open for any of them who want to contact you? Is that possible?

[Jenett]

What if you're keeping open for any of them who want to contact you? Is that possible?

It's a little like, oh, hanging out on a random chat site. You might get some awesome conversations - but you're also going to get lot of 'noise' - stuff that doesn't go anywhere, or really mean anything.

My general principle is:
- Don't put a lot of weight on anything that happens only once: building a relationship of *any* kind takes more than one contact.

- Cross-check stuff. If I have an interesting dream that I think might be deity related or some other sort of message, I do meditation or divination or other things around that. I also apply common sense - is what I got in the dream more likely a response to other things going on in my life, or my subconscious working something out? How does the dream feel compared to other dreams?

(I've had a couple of dreams that were clearly Messages - but we're talking under five in the past 10 years. So my base assumption is that most dreams aren't, for example.)

- How does what I'm getting match up with other sources, like research, commonly discussed behavior of a particular deity, etc? Experiences that are way different than other people report might well be something else.

- And in general, I tend to give more weight to experiences that I've been more direct about - so information that comes in during meditation work to connect with a particular deity gets more weight than "Oh, I saw X animal, that Must Be A Sign" or "Oh, I had a dream, that Must Mean Something."

If you're starting from not having any idea which deities you might wish to explore a relationship with, I recommend the book "Devoted to You", edited by Judy Harrow, which has an excellent method for some gentle explorations that don't require ongoing commitment up front.

My training involved something similar: researching and doing varied kind of work (creating a creative project of some kind about the deity we were learning about that month) that helped introduce us to a variety of different deities. The nice thing about that is that most people who've gone through that a) learn to figure out what other stuff might be a deity trying to get their attention or b) learn more about where they might want to focus. (Either of which is awesome.)

There's two pages on my website that might help with some more ideas:
http://gleewood.org/seeking/practice...-with-deities/
and
http://gleewood.org/seeking/practice...about-a-deity/

[Lonstar]

There's two pages on my website that might help with some more ideas:
http://gleewood.org/seeking/practice...-with-deities/
and
http://gleewood.org/seeking/practice...about-a-deity/

Very informative website! Thanks.

[Juniperberry]

Hi guys;

What does one have to do, or how would one know (or interpret) when/if they received an answer from spirits, the gods, one's ancestors, or something else?



What is it like? How do you know what is being said? How frequent is it?

I'll share two examples. Very upg.

Gift-giving deals alot with reciprocity. So I think you can say its effective when you receive back, and that getting something back should be somewhat obvious- or else it wouldn't be as strong a tradition.

Anyway, I gave an offering to Vidar when I had some unspoken concerns about relocating. ( The offering was made simply to maintain a relationship and show him honor.)There were a few options and one region in particular had me filled with a lot of questions.

Soon after, my husband and I had some coins falling off the chairs at our feet at separate times -three altogether- and each one was a state quarter for that region. It was obvious to us that we were getting some type of hint.

The latest happened just last night, actually. The last few nights I've been star gazing and really wondering about the heathen's connection to the sky, since there isn't much other than "its there". My husband and I talked a bit about it, but I had no answers.

Then yesterday I felt compelled to start doing some more research into continental Germanic heathenry. The first webpage I visited for this had the featured article "The Sky Connection". (The same article I posted about today.) Now, I don't think the article answers all my questions or is truth, but its definitely a direction and steers my thoughts closer to the heathen worldview. It was a neat find just when I needed it. It's almost a conversation between myself and my ancestors-like facebooking links, heh.

And, I usually gift to my ancestors just on principle without expecting anything back. I think last night was them returning the favor. *shrug*

Anyway. I think you know when they are alive and active in your life. When you can see their influence at work. Could it be coincidence, sure, but its a helpful and appropriate coincidence all the same and that's all I need.


And remember, every relationship is different. Don't expect yours to have the dynamics or language of someone else's.