I've been on a journey of voracious reading in the last month. I've bought several books on Anglo-Saxon spirituality, shamanism, and traditions, all in the search for the meaning of "wyrd". This journey began a few months ago, when I had an internal question about appropriation of a faith tradition of an indigenous people. Then it led me to try to discover my own ancestry. Then I had to spend some time coming to terms with White Privilege and racism in general, and how the desire to find out more about 'whiteness' can become a thin line between racial pride and racial prejudice. This is not something I ever intended, but I feel I have grown in my perspectives.
So, I'm a white woman, with German and English roots, who is looking up Anglo-Saxon heritage, Anglo-Saxon religion, and the word "wyrd". I adopted the name "The Wyrd Woman" because I feel that is who I am: a woman who explores the meaning of "wyrd" and strives to live a life of purposeful actions. I lived a long life in a reactionary state to my surroundings, and I intend to live the remaining portion making purposeful choices and directing my own journey.
I am exploring the possibility of starting a group for "wyrd" people in my community, but I feel I need to be able to confidently articulate what "wyrd" means, and why people would be willing to meet together under that name. We are all living in an awakening society, with the awareness of racism and how it affects us all. White people are slowly realizing the world they live in was contoured to their needs and their desires, and that others have been forced to live on the fringes, coping and surviving the best ways they can. I am not trying to start a "white" support group. This isn't about that, and I am looking for ways to avoid the automatic assumption that being "wyrd" means being "white". I happen to be white, but I don't want to be defined by it. I want to be defined as "wyrd". I want to dive into the spiritual connections of my ancient ancestors of Northern Europe, England and Scotland. I want to stop borrowing from indigenous American cultures, Asian cultures and Hispanic cultures and learn more about my own ancestry and roots. I want to know what my ancestors practiced, and what their rituals were.
In Anglo-Saxon culture, "wyrd" is roughly akin to destiny or fate. Their concept of "wyrd" is that there is no resisting it. I feel this is true in certain aspects, like the family you are born into, the place you are raised in during your childhood, your siblings and extended family are all part of fate, they are predetermined and not changeable. Other things seem like destiny, like meeting certain people and not being able to shake the feeling that you have known them from some time before. I think often of circumstances that led me to meet certain people that could not have happened except for fate. I also believe there are certain things that we can do to shape our destiny, we can change the direction of our lives by education, by involving ourselves in social justice activism, by promoting the things we love. This is what I would like to do with a group: I would like to explore the many paths of enlightenment and education that could help us individually and collectively change our destiny.
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