Friday belongs to Brhenti, the Lady of the Forge. I had a drafted prayer for her, but it was written when I was planning to do this in the morning, so it was not particularly useful. I stumbled through a different one, calling on her both personally as a power of creative work and for the household as the power of preservation – included in her purview is the art of putting things up, especially canning.

The process of working out how to associate powers with the days is a bit of research and a bit of trial and error. Redbird would be a good fit with many of the traditional Venus associations, but she’s far too associated with the sun for me to want to honor her any day but Sunday.

So then what to do with Friday? Well, as anyone who grew up watching Sailor Moon knows, Venus is associated with the element of metal, so I turned to Brhenti. She’s the Daughter of Iron, the Merciful Copper. I like the idea of decoupling passion from sex; while Brhenti is not asexual, the passion she inflames is creative. She inspires. She gifts poetry and wit alongside hammer and tongs. Reproduction as a concept is more of Mara’s portfolio, but Brhenti can inspire her own kind of generative impulse.

Her abundance is the well-stocked pantry and the never-blank page. Her gifts are simultaneously practical and flighty. She is prone to getting carried away as much as mortals are. She’s not an exact match, but while there are considerable overlaps in systems, there’s no perfect agreement anyway. I think she’s my best bet for Fridays.

After candles and incense and prayer, I sat with her briefly. The Littlest Insomniac was still up and I was distracted. I need to learn to work with that, but tonight the exercise felt a little hollow. Tonight felt like it was going to be a long 30 days.

I think about prepping a lot more lately, and it’s nice to have a power associated with that specifically. Mara gives and gives and then winter comes and she runs away wild. Brhenti shows us what to do with the bountiful harves and how to get through the snowy months.