By No Means Leave Your Gods
8/26/2025 ODIN
Maybe I need help. I know who I am, after all: maybe I need Odin.
This is the second time I am calling for help at Reservoir Ridge. “ODIN.” Loud. Strong.
Alone.
Silence.
I walked out to the cattails in the wetland area. Horses in the pasture next to the open space walked with me, along their side of the fence. I felt rain beginning — a drip — so I turned and headed back. One big appaloosa horse, big male, a loner, had remained behind while all the rest had walked west, toward shelter. He walked over toward me, looked at me; swished his tail, and slowly walked away.
Sleipnir, I thought. Odin’s 8-legged horse.
Looking up, I was startled to see a huge, boiling swirl of swallows, seagulls, and two vultures all circling directly over me. I raised my arms to the vultures. One cut across the circle, flew over me. Then all the birds — all at once — flew away. Scattered. One vulture, the other one, flew away last, circling higher and farther away until I could no longer see it.
Thought and Memory. I have no idea what is happening. Odin’s named birds are ravens, not vultures.
8/29/2025 WRATH
No more mellow pasture walks. My irritations are all coming out. I call “Odin” and am given people. People walking into me, talking over me, crashing past me on mountain bikes, greeting me unnecessarily, repeatedly, awkwardly, to allay their own fears. You’d think I would have more empathy, since I’m sure these awkward salutations are what Odin gets from me. Wasn’t greeting the first lesson?
But this doesn’t seem like how I actually feel, this irritation. It feels like an overlay. And yet it wells up, an energy to look at without becoming lost in it. As if I should study it.
I cannot tell if the birds overhead are vultures or ravens or hawks or crows. Too high. Too high above me to identify. I’m not sure what I can identify.
The I Ching shows me “Limitation.” Harmonize with the changes by adapting. Everything you will ever need can be found within. A sense of limitation, or lack of freedom, it suggests, is the reason we make changes in life.
This is all caused by The Wanderer. I am The Wanderer. And in one of his many guises, Odin is called The Wanderer. I am sensing a new way of seeing, after the loss of my metaphorical eye and all. Gave it up, Odin corrects from within my brain. Gave up an eye for wisdom.
There was a time before, in my life, before the Vulture, “to disconnect and wander into the unknown to explore how to move beyond limitations in thinking.” And that time is passed. This is what the
I Ching says. But I hear Odin’s voice. He calls for clear-eyed communication, bonds and agreements — in relationship to others. He called me back from my solo travel writing. DONE, he told me. A fierce call, that was.
Weirdly, or should I say, Wyrd, Odin speaks clearly to me through the Chinese Book of Changes. “Limitations may seem like obstacles to forward progress, but these obstacles are really an opportunity to change how we view restrictions. Autonomy may have to make sacrifices when in relationship with others. The limitations we face serve our wellbeing. In what way is a limitation setting you free?”
9/1/2025 SILENCE
The vultures didn’t show up today.
Maybe I didn’t show up today.