Hel, Guardian & Gatekeeper
On my rosary I include three goddess beads, one for each of the tribes, giving thanks to Frig, Freo, and Hel with citrine, amber, and tiger’s eye respectively. The first two are obviously honored as the queens of their garths and homes, but calling the third “queen of the eoten or rökkr” seems more dubious, unless I envision the three as representative of the Over, Middle, and Underworlds, in which case her inclusion is especially fitting.
More than that, I owe her a great debt for scaring the shit out of me when I needed it most. Fascinated by heathen mysticism, I essentially set out woefully unprepared and grandiosely delusioned as to my intent. I was, to put it bluntly, humbled before her, and I didn’t mess with shit I didn’t understand from then on. The next day I bought her a rose, dried it on my altar, and left it in the snow for her as an offering. She has been in my prayers ever since, even if the observance is somber.
When I pass over the tiger’s eye bead, I invoke her as “Guardian and Gatekeeper, Giver of Grace.” I see her as both protecting the living from the dead as guardian and regulating souls’ entrance into Death as gatekeeper, but also as ruling over a place that, while sorrowful, ensures each soul is given something to eat at death’s table.
As a culture we have such an unhealthy relationship with death in part because of the distance we maintain between it and us, pretending as though we will never die or artificially extending life without extending its quality. Death was a common occurrence centuries, even decades ago, but now we shield ourselves from it and fear it irrationally, pretending it doesn’t exist and trying to mask the pain of loss. To live is also to die. Death deserves our respect and reverence. But nobody said it would be easy.
I believe Hel appeared to me at that time in part because I had just lost my paternal grandmother, the woman I felt closest to of all my relatives, and was experiencing the loss of someone dear to me for the first time in my life. (I was lucky to have gotten away without knowing death until I was nineteen, but it also made me that much more keenly aware of her passing.) Hel did not comfort so much as confront me, and I was able to cope with my feelings on my own. Seeing even that tiny glimpse of Hel while I was struggling with grief for the first time put a lot of things into perspective, and allowed me to puzzle out my thoughts on death in a spiritual context.
I remember Ruth by a number of small trinkets of hers now stored on my altar, and feel her when I call upon my family’s Ides. She is not gone entirely; I still have my memories of her.
The significance of Hel being my first mystical experience makes Hallows all the more appropriate for the beginning of a serious year-and-a-day study of saxon paganism and witchcraft. I begin with the death of my old life and will end with death again, completing the cycle and preparing me to start my spiritual journey anew. My ancestors will be there with me, the women whom I honor on the fourth bead of my rosary, moonstone. “Ancient Ancestors, aid us and our own.” When I like three candles for them on Hallows, may they be a beacon in the darkness of the long nights of winter soon to come.
