The first time I deliberately left my body, I met Hyndla.

I’d been shoved into the Northern Tradition by my long-dead Germanic ancestors, without really understand what I needed to do or why. I thought that the Bloodhound Goddess might be willing to offer insight. So I sat under the cloak, and my mind stepped out of my body and up the craggy slopes to where Her cave is nestled in the Jotunheim mountains.

Hyndla welcomed me in that way that old folks do where they continue on with their routine but allow you to be a part of it. She sat at Her hearth tearing into meat with Her wolfish teeth, while I sat and petted Her dogs and waited for Her to finish chewing and answer my questions. I had the sense of this ancient Goddess flipping through an astral encyclopedia of information, accumulated over millennia of living and faring forth.

I had sought answers to particular questions of my own ancestry and Gifts and filial obligations. The way that She answered gave me a glimpse of how immense, ancient, and boundless She is. She read my body with the precision and ease of a doctor doing a routine checkup. She casually plucked the veins of my arms, setting me vibrating at the necessary frequency to resonate with a specific ancestor who could help me. She shot me full of bright light, showing me just how much my sinews could take.

Hyndla knows the ways that genetic inheritance intertwines with energetic inheritance. She has walked both the blood lines and the lines of spiritual initiation. She has traced the lines of inspiration, affection, and philosophy as thoroughly as the lines of the blood.

Artwork by E.J. Lowell.