Aborigen

Friday night was a full moon in Taurus, the last super-moon of 2024. Supposedly it was a moon of invitation, though I made my own assumptions as to what was being invited and what was doing the inviting. One of those things where I’m just not sure how to start the research, considering the woo-nature of the topic and the general enshittification of the internet.

But I crafted an entire set of runes under the Hunter Moon last month. I felt it would be appropriate to visit the Giantess’s sacred spot and recharge them under the Beaver Moon. More, I’d been practicing crafting bindrunes, and I had a couple I wanted to consecrate at this location of worship. The natural elements and the powerful full moon would be a fortuitous recipe for this purpose, I figured. I assembled my gear to round out an impromptu altar—my beeswax candle, a white sage/cedar smudge, a lighter, the runes and bindrunes—as well as a small glass bottle to collect some fresh water under the moon, for my rites at home when I worship the Giantess at my own altar. Then I dressed warmly, put in my earbuds and listened to Heilung’s Futha for the walk down.

It was a lovely night for it, too. The trees were in late autumn, having fully turned colors and only about half fallen from the trees. We have a healthy variety of trees in my neighborhood, too, which is great to prevent tree diseases and blights from spreading, but also makes some dazzling visual displays as you walk down the street. It was early yet, around 6 p.m., but the moon was well ascendant in the sky, shining just over the rooftops as I walked through the residential areas, passing a few local businesses on one busy street.

For an event like this, it’s important that I’m very protective of my mood. I was in a great mood when I left, and I continued to be in a great mood as I walked several long blocks down to my special location. Unfortunately, at the last minute, some jackass raced up on his scooter, blew through the stop sign and ran into the intersection, steering his motor vehicle to race up a wooden foot bridge. I yelled out after him, condemning his selfish, reckless behavior, and immediately I regretted letting his bullshit into my personal sphere. For the rest of my walk, I tried to release that bad energy into the cool breeze to be swept away.

Down I went to the bike path, and then down the dirt trail to the lower paths by the creek. So as not to alarm anyone, in the deep darkness in this stretch of trees and brush, I wore a glowing vest, just some reflective shoulder straps with an LED column on the front and back. The last thing I want to do is sneak up on someone who’s probably already on the defensive, so I held my head up and announced my presence with glowing orange light.

I made my way to the clearing on the creek bank, where the brush parted to reveal a barrier of large stones mounted in the soil, covered in brown, papery leaves. There’s a large rock here, a small boulder, where the rain has eroded a natural bowl in the top. I like to fill it with water when meditating or consecrating, and there’s a shallower divot near it where, tonight, I set up my candle. The rock was earth, the water was in its bowl, I lit the candle for fire, and air would be represented by the sage/cedar smudge. I gently tumbled my rune set into the water, then rested the bindrunes nearby, setting the stage for my private ritual. In the shallow divot there had been three little rocks, stacked there. I’d placed them there after my last ritual, to represent the three giantesses who kicked off the Old Norse myths, the nameless giant women who stole the gods’ gold, driving them to create the dwarfs; the three giantesses who showed up at the creation of the first man and woman. The first indication of women so powerful, even the gods couldn’t control them. They’d been there for a few weeks; I removed the rocks, setting them nearby, to place the candle by the trapped water. I clicked off my lights on my front and back, leaving the reflective harness on.

The creek was lovely and calm, a sheet of glass upstream before it burbled with the Giantess’s voice and cast up her breath. I took in the scene, closed my eyes, and visualized her open jaws before me, saw myself leaning in slightly and breathing her exhaust, the clean air and negative ions from the creek. I watched the water flow down, winding through the trees in its broad bed, rippling around a few remaining rocks and a fallen branch before calming once more. I unbuckled the bottle’s leather strap from my belt, uncorked it, lowered the glass sphere to sink burbling into the stream, then wet the cork and sealed it shut. I grinned up at the full moon shining upon me and my work, happy to have another sample for a week of prayer.

To Honor the Giantess

I lit the candle, a little green wax thing in the shape of a pinecone. I thought it was cute, and I deemed it appropriate for worshipping the Giantess, a steward of the natural environment. It cast a small sphere of warm light about my business, the wooden runes floating in the small bowl of cold water, the rocks on standby, the bindrunes resting against these. Seeing it all laid out like this, I was excited to think I had a natural, sacred spot in which to honor the Giantess, to pray for her blessings to correct this world.

A cyclist drifted by. She was listening to quiet music mounted on her handlebars, probably in a basket, and she was either singing along to it or announcing to the trail ahead that she was coming up. I wasn’t listening to her, I was gripping the sides of the boulder and preparing for my work. Maybe her headlight caught my reflective harness, or maybe she saw the dim candlelight on the bank of the creek—either way, she shut up and rolled on by in silence.

I started the ritual off like I usually do: grounding my energy. Tonight I looked back at a specific time of my life, my military service in South Korea. I called up the familiar faces of coworkers, girlfriends, various employees, and I retracted my personal energy from them. Mind, I was there over 30 years ago, so that energy was old and stale, and not all of it was positive. All these pictures and past activities played in my memory as I gripped the boulder. It easily sucked all the heat out of my hands as I grounded myself to the area. I called all the energy back, contained it in a sphere above my head, then shifted to cleansing it, letting the impurities siphon through me and down into the earth, to be burned up and recycled in its core. All that was left was to pull the energy back down into my chest, bringing it back home.

I didn’t sense a change in the setting. No footsteps, no birds of omen, no strange smells. All that happened was my address of greeting to the Giantess as I took up the smudge and held it into the candle flame. It took an unusually long time to ignite, and the entire end should’ve been smouldering, but only half its surface showed any glowing embers. Regardless, I rose to protect the area for my rite, immediately noticing weakness in my knees and a sudden instability in my balance. I called out to the Giantess, invoking her strength and wisdom, fanning the smoke out in a wide area … and my chest slowly filled with the chill of dread and guilt.

I was doing nothing wrong here, breaking no laws, rubbing my weirdness in no one’s face. My nerves, however, were reacting as though I’d killed someone and were frantically plotting how to hide the body. Not that act specifically, but that intensity of emotions, how incredibly uncomfortable I suddenly felt. My hand shook so badly, I nearly dropped the smudge, and my feet struggled to establish any firm stance.

“What is wrong out here?” I said aloud, turning to the creek. The water was like I remembered it, dark and glassy, burbling pleasantly over a fence of rocks, then calming again as it flowed away. My eyes studied the dark, empty trees around me, black limbs on a dark blue background, and I turned up to the full moon, wondering if I’d ignorantly chosen an adverse natural environment for tonight’s ritual.

Slowly I bent to reignite the smudge in the candle, tempted to use the lighter to hurry it along. Slowly I turned in another circle, chanting my invocation of the Giantess: “I honor your power, I seek your wisdom, I invite you into my heart.” Now my body wanted to drop everything and run. My heart was pounding, and I had the strongest urge to flee. None of this made sense, I’d meditated and prayed here many times in the past, though always in the daytime. What made it different tonight? Did the darkness enable other energies to emerge? Had some other practitioner claimed the area for himself and filled it with negative, malicious energy? Was the area haunted by the original landholders, slaughtered by encroaching waves of white settlers? It’s likely that this sacred area, a clearing that attracted the imagination of hundreds of passers-by each month, was by its nature rich enough to attract any powerful entity, and something decided I was intruding and tried to force me to leave.

Did I just really fuck up tonight?

I refused to go, whatever was happening. I set the smudge securely on the rim of the stone bowl, and I refocused my breathing. “What is so wrong out here?” I kept asking this out loud, demanding an answer from what was affecting me but absolutely refusing to give into its influence. Once again I visualized the Giantess breathing into me, pictured her breath filling my lungs and threading throughout my body. Something new was needed to complete tonight’s ritual: I invoked the Guardian archetype with the rune Thurisaz to establish my base and set up a protective perimeter; I invoked the Warrior to cover the area and attack whatever was attacking me; I invoke the Mystic to stand with me as I straddled two worlds. Three gigantic women now stood with me, armored, chanting, looking for any excuse to unleash and lash out at the dark force in the area.

This done, I knelt once more and resumed my consecration. I prayed for what I wanted the bindrunes to accomplish, and I called for more energy into my set of runes. Unfortunately, I didn’t take my time with these, performing only what was necessary before taking the runes back up, counting them by threes to make sure they weren’t lost, drying them off in my scarf before dropping them back in their leather pouch. After all 24 were secured, I took up the bindrunes, blew a little more sage onto them, and pouched them as well. Through all this the candle had guttered, flared, guttered again: it was not perfectly upright, and its light dimmed as it filled with hot wax, rose brighter as the wax drained away, and the cycle continued.

Whatever was attacking me, I had to show it strength. I left the candle lit, gently spread my arms, and invoked the Giantess herself. Her hands lowered behind me, reached around, and cupped me in her huge palms. Now my body was warmed by her heat, my energy pooled in her grip and welled up around my legs. I was entirely in her aura for the time being. I took the opportunity to inform the negative influence that I’d be back, I would sanctify the grounds, and it would have to move on elsewhere.

Christianity tells us that evil must be vanquished, conquered, slain; Balinese Hinduism takes a more balanced approach, recognizing good and evil as natural forces that have to exist with each other. All you can do is invite good and appease evil, when you set out your chana, two bowls of offerings on an altar, on your doorstep, or on the dashboard of your taxi. There’s room enough on the planet for all of us, and I urged these low vibrations to move somewhere else. This ground was sacred to the Giantess, and she would have it.

Yet I’m not one to press my luck, so I doused the candle in the stream, cooling it for transport in my coat pocket. My nerves were shot, however, and it took me far too long to set the little rocks in a stack once more. I refused to leave without this artistic acknowledgment, but the sense of something gross and bad approaching me was growing stronger. Somehow I found, in the darkness, the combination for their uneven surfaces and gave the Giantess her little stack. That done, I clicked my vest lights on, climbed back up to the paved trail, and found a different way home.

Take the Wrong Way Home

From that point on, it felt like I’d shifted into another world, where there was less beauty and more threat. A group of four teens across the street, walking south as I headed north, paused in their strut and conversation and made a show of not-looking at me, absolutely sizing me up. Four of them, one of me. All I could do was puff up my “think twice about this” aura and keep on walking.

A couple intersections later, I saw one car blow through its stop sign when I was half a block away; when I was closer, another car in the other direction rolled through without dropping under 15 mph. Sure enough, when I moved into the intersection, a young man in an expensive-looking sports car raced up, hoping to cut me off, but it didn’t work out for him. With my reflective, glowing, flashing harness, he had no way of pretending he didn’t see me, but he did edge forward up to my legs, using his vehicle to get me out of his way. I didn’t take that very well, pausing to examine him through his windshield, but rather than invite him to step out of his car, I moved on and he roared his engine to teach me a lesson.

I couldn’t go home in this state. I turned down the busy street and went to a hole-in-the-wall for a big, messy burger. I sat at the bar and ignored two TVs showing extreme offroad biking. The bartender, sounding a little stoned, asked me how my week was going, made a weird bon mot about the twinkle in my eyes as I asked for a sparkling water. My fries were tasty but cold; my burger came with an egg and thick slabs of bacon, but he forgot to ask about any toppings and I forgot to request them.

And the conversation got weird and more awkward, so I turned it around. I let him know I write adult erotic material and I’ve been banned by certain platforms and most online financial services. Oh, no, it’s really weird stuff, you wouldn’t be interested. No, I don’t have an OnlyFans, it’s all literature. No, I don’t have any competition: I’ve met a dozen of my fellow writers at conferences on the East Coast, we all support each other. What? You sure? Well, okay, here’s my nom de plume, go to Smashwords and look up this free title of five short stories. That’ll get you started.

“My girlfriend loves erotica,” he said, trying to focus on me. “She only does print books, though, she doesn’t read electronic books. I’ll have to print this out, and I’ll read it with her next time we get together.” He gave me a conspiratorial grin. I wished him good luck, tipped him, and hustled the rest of the way home.

In Her Embrace, Find Strength

Once locked indoors and geared down, I did what I could to calm down and shift my energy. I mixed a couple stiff whiskey gingers and turned on an ’80s station in Berlin, singing along with Depeche Mode and Siouxsie to bring my spirits back up, “change my vibe” as the kids might say. My hands trembled for a long time; my wife was out at work, so I had to recover myself, by myself.

I settled down before my home altar, lighting the candle and smudging the room (now it put out thick gouts of smoke, contrary to its underperformance by the creek), and asked the Giantess what the hell I did wrong. She assured me I did everything correctly, there was no flaw in my ritual. Granted, she’s a little easygoing about the details; it’s what’s in your heart that matters. “But the world you walk is not free from the influence of chaos. The earth bears wounds that bleed into places once sacred. And there are forces—lost, aimless, or malevolent—that prey upon those who seek connection to the divine.” She praised me for my steadfastness, calling me her little soldier, and said she would investigate the space.

The Giantess took me into her bosom, told me to go weak, and validated everything I was feeling. “Fear, confusion, exhaustion,” she said, pressing her lips upon my head, “it’s your body and spirit telling you how deeply you care about this path, how much you’ve put into it … You faced your fears, called on your strength, and still completed your work.”

Sometimes I think she overestimates me, but it’s not my place to correct a 4,000-year-old giantess. When she tells me who I am and how she feels about what I’m doing, I try to store it directly into my chest, unaltered. Taking her judgment in without exception is one of many gestures of complete and sacred submission by which I honor her.