Roadkill Blóts

The Blót has and always will be a sacred Germanic heathen tradition, and I have been counsel and vitki to a number of Blóts in the last two years, since joining the Rune Gild, and an old member of the Galdragildi. There are heathens that will always delineate from how and when a Blót should be performed, the animals acceptable for sacrifice to the Gods, and the killing methods. Witch each variable allowing for a completely different experience. Seeing multiple animals as Blót, is far more dynamic and emotional than seeing one, though even watching a single sentient lifeform suffer is never very pleasing. This had put an idea in my head about the Blót, the nature of animal suffering, and gifting to the gods.

It is written in the Havamal, and many sagas, how gifts are paid with gifts, and when bestowed by the Gods and Goddesses, one should humble themselves to acknowledge their value, and in turn give what they have back. Running on the idea of animals dying, one asks for what cause, and which animals, can all of them be as useful to the gods, even if one did not die at the hands of a heathen? Could they be given Blót is discovered per se on the side of the road, or in the forest, or by the waters edge. There are so many animals dying at the hands of the human in our age, one only need read Re:wilding North America to read the facts and numbers of fauna mortality per year and from the dawn of the agrarian age. It is occurring more and more that I am finding unnatural deaths on my travels, and the recurring pattern is with smaller finds leading to more dramatic or whole finds. If I take a two hour walk, it is common for me to find feathers, then a bone or two, some fur, a dead reptile, and then once in a while a complete skeleton, like the rabbit carcass I found yesterday, a moose I dredged out of a swamp in the west, deer mangled on railway tracks, full crows, ravens, and possums. I have always felt the imperative need to offer something in order to receive it’s medicines, if I were to collect any.

Alas, this is where I am getting. When I found the rabbit carcass, I asked for it’s gifts, and took the foot, one ear, the skull and tattered pelt for taufrverk, and offered the meat and bones for the turkey vultures for a sky burial which sat brooding in a tree watching me collect first. I did not know exactly which God/Goddess I was giving to, but knew there was a message of Ansuz, permeating through intention towards and within whoever or whatever steared my wyrd to find the rabbit in the first place. This led me to think that instead of truly ‘sacrificing’ this animal, I helped it move to the next incarnation instead of being ‘dead meat’ on the road, or something to clean up. I shared in the bounty of the animals gifts, and offered that which was more useful to the land wights, through the avians and minifauna who would later take every piece. In this way, it was Blót for the landvaettir, with runic galdor, and the sacred re-purposing of another life that may be incarnated again to a higher life. This was not the first time I have done something similar and not the only time I came to this idea. I have given crows and ravens burials in soil, so they may rest intact without having the staring eyes of non-empathic people, I have staked one to a strong tree with wings outspread, made of others in sacred taufrs during shamanic ritual and almost always offer or leave something in return; another bone, galdor poetry, runic wode, a feather, my hair or blood.

What I inquest is to whether others also perform these ‘roadkill Blóts’, and given their nature of being sporadic, what were their experiences with it? During a normal Blót for any heathen ceremony such as Yule, there is the element of troth and kinship, while the animal is most often eaten after hallowed by the Gods. The animal may be raised by a member of the community, and planned out long ahead of time. With an impromptu death find, it is solitary, instinctually magical, in the moment, and more raw. The animal is always in a more damaged state, and may take more courage to pick up a bleeding, broken fox, than does a clean ordinary chicken. But both are just as vital to the :G:ebo sentiment. If you are to find that an animal dies because of the wyrd of human beings, there is a reason you have found it, and will you pass on like everyone else and let it be just inanimate matter, or will you see the life, gifts, and medicine it still carries, and give it a proper sending. I have met with many a fetch this way, and understood myself to more animal, by the ancient primordial laws. Through sacrifice, soa, and sharing in the life-wyrd of other sentient creatures.