Lunar Eclipse

When I was doing my deliveries in the hours before dawn on Saturday, I was looking forward to celebrating Yule with my friends at day’s end. I had no idea the Yule would preview itself for the world to see in the sky above us.

The moon was the bright night shield; Manni in his full silver splendor. A full shield of white silver, the symbolic defender of his mother Sunna, the night reflector and promise of the dawn to come. While ledgend has it that Skoll, the first of wolves stalks him eternally in the night sky, consuming him endlessly ere he stalks and kills the sun (his mother) to bring the end days, usually it is the act of months, and a metaphor, rather than a witnessed act.

There was a howling of wolves, swiftly joined by the eerie yipping of coyotes, and the baying of Husky and hound. I looked about to see what ailed them, only to see the shadow of the red jawed hunter take his grip upon the night shield. Skoll stalked the dark night, and the night-shield, the defender of Sunna, was the prey. As I delivered, I kept looking up to see the dark shadow of the wolf jaws claim the night shield, bite by bite, until the darkness ruled.

In the heart of the dark, where every breath drew knives down throat and lung, where every branch and rock was caked in white fanged ice, and the earth lay cold and dead beneath me, I looked inside for despair. I did not find it. In the heart of the dark I found defiance, in the heart of the cold I burned with pride. My gods have given to me this promise, that while they stand no endless night shall fall upon the children of Ask and Embla, that while they live there will come a dawn, a spring, and life. In the heart of the dark, I roared with laughter.

Blood red and dripping from his wounds did Manni rise. My fist raised in salute, I chanted his praises, and made offerings to Odin whose trickery forever binds the sky-wolf on his endless hunt. The moon in blood drenched splendor won forth from its dark grave to give pause to Skoll, and hope to man. As the Yuletide darkness is filled with the promise of spring, so is the darkness of the eclipse filled with the promise of returning light. The promise of the gods drawing the matching celebration and praise of men.

Most slept through the lunar eclipse, and view it on the internet as a celestial curiosity. Our ancestors knew better. Metaphor or metaphysics, the world writes truths ten thousand miles wide across the night sky and still most humans miss them. Praise be to the gods who defend and inspire us, the ancestors who gave us life, and guide our steps, and all the wights, alfar, beasts and living things that share this dreaming orb with us. Raise a horn to each other, and to the high ones this Yule, for we live in a time of wonder, though few enough care to look up and notice.

Ah, John that's beautiful.