The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Hi!

I've been flailing about lately, trying to understand the path I've accepted. The problem is, I'm having trouble getting answers. My pendulum work gets confused when I get confused or emotional. I don't have a direct way of asking deity at the moment. Here's the problem: I don't know what the path that deity has set out for me leads to. (Sorry for the poorly constructed sentences. My grammar goes when I get this confused.) Is my path to be religious, devotional, divinatory (divinational?), liminal, magical? Some of each? A few of them? Something else entirely?

Everything ahead just seems to be slightly out of reach. Clouded over. If I knew what I was heading towards, maybe I could focus myself in an appropriate fashion. The thing is, I don't really even know what I'm supposed to learn yet. So. Yeah. Confusion.

My religious path is Norse Pagan--I can't define it more than that at the moment because I don't know how or where to focus things--and I'm studying the OBOD course as a spiritual path. It is Odin who called me, then passed me off to Loki. I'm only "allowed" to work tiny magics at the moment, little spells on charms. I think I might be being directed towards runes, but I don't know why.

Any help would be so welcome and appreciated! And if I'm not making sense, just let me know!

Would you be interested in an Ogham reading? I'm away from home today, but could have a go at it tomorrow.

 

That would be really interesting! I don't know much about Ogham. Thanks. :)

OK, will do. Would you prefer me to share the results here or by PM? I can do both if you like - key points here and more detail in PM.

 
That sounds awesome. Key points here and detail in PM. Thanks ever so much!

Are you still able to do this? If not, let me know and I can see if someone else can get to it. Thanks so much!

 
Hi - I'm so sorry I haven't been able to get to this yet. I've been battling migraines this week which have slowed me down. I should be able to do it by the weekend. If that's too late for you, go ahead and ask someone else. Apologies again!

Any help would be so welcome and appreciated! And if I'm not making sense, just let me know!

 
Sorry this has taken a while! This was a really interesting reading. Thanks for letting me have a go! There should be a picture above. The way I read ogham is by picking a handful of feda (letters) and throwing them, then reading the pattern they fall in.

Feda pulled: hUath, luis, saille, duir, coll, gort, onn, tinne, ur. This is, like, half the feda in the set I didn't intend to pull this many, and considered re-throwing, but got a distinct sense that I wasn't meant to. There are some quite auspicious feda in this mix, so my initial impression is a good one.

I tend to start by looking at the overall pattern. I have to say, it doesn't usually look so tangled! I'm quite impressed by how some of them landed, knotted into each other. It suggests a multi-faceted, potentially complicated path, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

hUath is the only one that's placed on its own, separate from the others. hUath can be negative or a warning (which I'll come back to) - but in a magical or religious query, I tend to read it first as being about crossing boundaries into liminal, Otherworldly spaces. With it going straight upwards on its own, in parallel to the more knotted stuff happening next to it, I think this is about something that will be a constant throughout your complicated path. This looks like a road of divination or spirit-work, to me.

The rest of it is much more complex and inter-related, though. I work on a timescale layout, with the feda that fall near me being things that are likely to happen soon, and the ones further away being about the more distant future. The two nearest (and on the top, so very prominent in your current life) are luis and saille. Luis tends to be very positive, often about herbal magic or magical protection. Then we've got saille - again about liminality, but more fluid, watery, to do with flow and fate. Together they speak to me of memory, natural magic and folk magic.

Then going straight up underneath those, we have gort, which is the field or the garden, the resting place. It's also sometimes associated with ivy, in terms of intense growth spurts and twisting pathways. Here, it reminds me of the story of the two paths up the tree of life - the path of the mystic, straight up, versus the twisting path of the witch or magician. Again this speaks to me of magic and liminality, work done in the shadows and with the spirits.

Crosssing gort in a straight line across is onn - the wheel. At some point I think you're going to start moving forward very fast, after a period of growth and preparation in which you establish yourself in a path. After that will come work and mastery - given that, further up, it's crossed by tinne, the fid of the iron bar, which is about balance and mastery. The path you're exploring (the possibly magical and liminal one) will at this point move you deeper in, I suspect. At this point the key will be to keep working.

The last two feda cross that one roughly, but also touching several of the other feda - they are coll and ur. Coll is about wisdom and is always very auspicious to receive, especially at this point of a reading about your path. Keep going with the mastery of your path, because wisdom will result. The wisdom of the hazel tree, associated with coll, is the wisdom of the natural world and the five senses, in Irish myth. It's also the wisdom that springs forth from the primal waters at the base of the world tree, to put it into a Norse or proto-Indo-European structure. That takes us back to the earlier occurrence of saille - it's a deeper exploration of something that will occur early. Fate and flow and liminality again. Meanwhile, ur is the fid of death, earth and ancestry - I suspect this is about work with the spirits of the dead, or your ancestors, which might become important when you have more wisdom and mastery of your magical skills. The guidance of the ancestors seems important here.

Summary: you asked whether your path would be magical, divinatory, priestly etc. Although I don't know how many specific answers this reading has given, I would say that here the reading is leaning towards a spirit-worker path, with magical aspects, working in the liminal places, in the shadows. This can be a dangerous path - hUath at the beginning of a reading can be a warning of liminal or spiritual danger. Luis speaks of the importance of learning magical protection and building your magical skills, if you're going to work in the spirit world. This could be a twisting path, growing in strange directions, but the paths will lead forward towards mastery and the deep wisdom that comes from the Otherworld. I definitely get a sense of “don't rush”, too. Take things slowly. You may not know what place something has in your path until later, when you can step back and see the bigger picture.

Overall it's a good reading! There's nothing here that shouts to me as a red flag - except for hUath, which is that early warning of being very careful with spirit work and liminal work. That's why taking things slowly and building your skills is important.

I'm not sure there's much for me to add in PM, but please let me know if you have questions either here or on PM.

Wow! This is amazing, Naomi, thanks so much!

You're welcome! I'm very glad you find it useful.