Saturday again already? It rained all morning and we were out in the afternoon, but I went down to the creek around ten. It’s weird how big a difference in feeling that makes. Is it the act of being outside? The creek? The feeling of solitude rather than worrying about waking the kid?

Maybe all of the above, who knows?

Last week my primary concern was a lack of confidence when calling Tzymir, and this week was a great improvement on that front. My call for him was more scripted, and I got a sense that he approved. The format and language choices are starting to solidify across the different days. I am actively phrasing my prayers without caveats now. I am asking for things and I am making my offerings.

There is still conversation, but that is separate from the formal part of the practice. I feel that the separation is important because it allows me the space to ask with force, in a way I wouldn’t ask of someone I was actually having a conversation with. It’s more like the way I might ask an elected official to do what I want, or try to get a desired result from someone with power over my situation such as a boss or a city employee. It’s more transactional, but that’s not necessarily wrong, it’s just different.

I haven’t been smited yet. I think I sort of expected to be, when I started this exercise. If I wasn’t afraid of it, it wouldn’t have been hard to do, I guess.

I like having the actual conversation too, mind you, though some powers are more into that than others. Tzymir is not very chatty. He wants the formalities and very little else, and so that’s what I give him. Given that he’s not a God of Death, but a Dead God, I wonder how much of that is his personality and how how much are his limits. He is not a dying and rising god; he is more akin to Izanami in that he’s definitely, actually dead. He won’t walk the labyrinth to it’s end like the Iron Lady did, but he has been in it long enough that it is his.