Oath Text and Rite

Oath Rite and Evaluation of Performance:

Text:

I come before the Holy Aesir and Vanir, my honored dead, and all those Blessed among the Kindreds.

Though challenges arise, I promise to strive to my utmost to live Tru to the Nine Noble Virtues.

I promise to face my struggles in this world honourably.

I promise to lead by example, being the voice in the world that calls for justice and truth. 

I promise to learn from those who have lessons to give and teach those to whom I have knowledge to impart, and in so doing, strive to build the foundations of a community here on Earth that is true to the Gods.

I promise to honor myself as a sacred being, and strive to build up the Fellowship of Humanity.

I promise to Honor the Shining Ones, the Spirits of the World, and our Beloved Dead in my thoughts, words, and deeds.

May Tyr, the Lawkeeper and Oathholder, witness this promise and may Hlin guard and protect me in keeping it.

Performance:

Significant parts of this oath were written before I’d ever even heard of ADF.  I wrote those parts when I gave myself to a heathen path; or, more specifically, on the one year anniversary of the foundation of our kindred in Lansing, MI.  Those parts became the Kindred Oath that people took after a year of studying with us, if they chose at that time to join us.

Because of that Oath, I did not feel I could throw out the relationships I’d built with the Norse Gods when I joined ADF (nor did I have any desire to!) and so, in keeping with a deepening and ripening of parts of those relationships, I kept the core of the original oath and rewrote and added to it when I began to walk the path of ADF.

I feel that this oath binds me not only to heathenry and my gods, but to the ideals of ADF of learning and teaching and community building.  I am put on this earth to honor those that have gone before me, and to build for those that come after.  I do not and cannot have children of my blood.  However, I can adopt, spiritually or legally, and I can build a better world for all of humanity.  That is the core of what I feel called to do as a human, a pagan, a heathen, and a druid.

I gave my oath when I started the DP, because I wanted to formalize stepping onto the path.  When I did so, I intended to give it again as I finished the DP work, but the second time in front of my grovies.  Sadly, I have since moved and am once more solitary, so the second time was also alone.

I waited until dark so that my neighbors wouldn’t gossip (I live in a small town, they love to gossip) and went into the back yard where there’s a set of three huge boulders.  I laid an offering on each rock.  For the nature spirits, I gave bread and honey.  For the ancestors, I poured out a bottle of my great-grandmother’s favorite beverage (Canadian Dry).  For the gods, I offered a bottle of raspberry melomel that’s my favorite.  After I poured out my offerings and left the bread and honey on the rock, I took a seat in front of the rocks and just let myself listen to the sounds around me.  Mostly, the sounds were frogs singing.  I looked up at the sky and the stars and felt the breeze and smelled the wet grass.  Then I did the two powers meditation to center myself.

Once I felt centered and grounded in the natural world, the mundane falling away, I gave my oath to the spirits that had gathered for the offerings as my audience. 

Somehow, doing this outside, in nature, on a lovely night in early September, it all felt more real than saying the words had at the beginning of my path.  Not that this is an end; rather, it’s a rededication to what I’ve learned in the last year and a few months.  There are so many things I want to start now: an herb garden, picking up music more, building a community here in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin.  The things I learned on the DP will help and strengthen me in doing them.