jprussell | (Reply)

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Thanks for the encouragement! And yes, as I might have said before, I'm very much of the mind that there's a certain appeal to using beautiful objects as part of the practice, as long as it doesn't get out of hand. For this Tally I found some lovely oak beads, which might be more in style of the Druid Revival, but it's still a suitably regal Northern wood. For the three bigger beads, I went with ash. Personally I prefer the traditional interpretation of Yggdrasil as an ash, even if I respect the scholarly position that yew might be more "correct". For the medallion, I went with a piece of an apple branch from my own property, since I didn't find anything for sale I either liked enough or felt was worth the price. One thing this showed me is that the Etsy market for beads of tropical woods is huge, but there's not much choice for temperate trees.
In case you're curious how it ended up, here's a picture of the result: https://tinypic.host/image/Tally.24yYxf

Using the old Germanic languages could have been a good option too. Still, I'd also rather have them in my native language if possible. Speaking of which, after my last comment I had another look at the Catholic prayers, and I think I made some decent progress. I was thinking of a way to adapt the Apostle's Creed's declarations of "I believe..." with something more suited to actions and intentions, following your reasoning for the "Tree Deeming". That's when I had a realization that's probably obvious: what if prayers could also be affirmations, JMG style?

So I tried to phrase it as "I [verb]...", as if it's already a fact, which as I understand it is the idea behind affirmations. Instead of the Christian triad of declaring belief in the three aspects of the Christian deity, I made a threefold structure based around 1) the Aesir/wisdom and trust in their guidance, 2) the Vanir/peace and reciprocity and 3) the Tree/being rooted in the human and non-human community of life. I also tried to incorporate some alliteration and rhythm, without going all-in on the poetic meter. It's not the most exquisite composition of all time, but I'm reasonably happy with it. At least for a first attempt. And again, your explanation of your thinking behind your "Tree Deeming" was very helpful here as a guide.