I was talking with a friend recently (I won’t name names, though I don’t think she reads this blog) and she mentioned that I needed to write more about my relationship with Ing and what kind of work I do and how I see and interact with him.
I’ve picked up a copy of Richard North’s Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, which has a huge section on Ing in it, and connects him securely to the sacrificial king myth which is so central to my practice.
The hard thing though, is that while I can talk about him as this old, primal, almost alien force – this God of death and rebirth, of prosperity and providence, of sex and death and the ancestors, the God of the World… I can’t really put into words what it’s like to actually experience that presence? I do know that the more I work with him the older and stranger he gets, and that passing him off as Freyr “the god with the big dick” is overlooking something powerful and deep.
And, in some ways, working with him reminds me of the kinds of things I read in Peter Grey’s Apocalyptic Witchcraft – that he’s both in and outside of civilization, that he’s deviant and counter cultural and deeply sexual but also deeply tied to the dead and the elves. I’ve been “told” that one of the reasons I don’t deal much with other powerful forces among the Good People is that Ing is such a strong presence in my life. He’s the Lord of the Elves as well as all of the other things he is.
My relationship with him is ineffable – I can’t put it into words what it’s like to serve as the priest of this deity, to carry symbols of him, and his work. To know that he is the Boar, the Sheaf, the Sacrifice – John Barleycorn who falls and rises and falls and rises. The prosperous god of the mound, who dispenses and rules over frith and community.
It’s such a complex thing to try to untangle. And maybe I just need to take it one piece at a time, but I’d like to get out there the idea that there’s so much more to working with Fro Ing, with Freyr, than just fertility and sexuality (though he does have those aspects, and if you happen to be LGBT, know that is welcome in his service as well).
So this is me making a loose promise to talk more about Ing. Maybe as I read more, I’ll have more concrete things to say. And maybe this will just be me spouting a bunch of UPG. But at least it’ll be out there – UPG that others can take and try on and experiment with.
Little Druid on the Prairie 