"What is it like connecting with a wolf pelt or other wolf parts?"
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"What is it like connecting with a wolf pelt or other wolf parts?"
When I first bought my wolf pelt from Lupa, whose stores are on Etsy and Storenvy, I had to let it air out. I had to give it time to breathe I would be able to don it. When I finally did, it was like slipping on my own skin and fur. When I was able to ritually connect with it, it felt like a completion, a marriage of what was inside and outside. It felt like coming home. Home to myself, home to us.
A tintype photograph of the author at Ann Arbor Pagan Pride. Credit to Stephen Boyce.
I still get that feeling when I handle my wolf skin. I carry that feeling of connection whether it is on me, lying on my partner, or in my room. There is a feeling of weight in handing it to another person because they are handling a one of my souls.
The feeling of connecting with my wolf pelt in ritual is generally a full sensory one. The feeling of the skins contacting each other, of skin on skin and a kind of overlapping feeling in my souls. I would frequently pull the head down over my eyes so I would be looking through the wolf eyes, and there was that feeling of us that would come over me much stronger than if I left his head atop mine. Smells and sounds would strengthen sometimes, and sometimes they would muffle. Tastes might be sharper or duller depending on what it is I'm munching on. Sometimes, particularly if engaging in something involving hamfara (faring forth in hamr) I might feel myself go forth as a large wolf. Otherwise, I might feel like I am going forth as a werewolf, or úlfheðinn.
Connecting with a wolf pelt can be quite a powerful experience for other folks as well. Particularly if a person has never seen a wolf up close, it can be shocking just how big a wolf can be. My wolf is about 6' from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail. When folks have asked permission in places like Ann Arbor Pagan Pride, ConVocation, or Michigan Paganfest, them touching and being able to pet the pelt can be a powerful experience. When folks touch, paw at, or pet my pelt without my permission (particularly if I am wearing it) it feels like a violation, often uncomfortable and invasive.
Because I do not wear the pelt for only aesthetic purposes, I do not relate to it as a mere costume. It is a soul, one of my own, and its own as well. It is the skin of a living being and that living being connected with me in a deep manner, becoming part of my (to borrow a term from Winifred Hodge Rose) my 'soullar system' or Soul Matrix. It also acts as a kind of connection point, doorway, or den, from which contact wolf and wolf-aligned Ginnreginn, that is Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir, may work through. When folks have held the pelt it has produced powerful connections. I have seen some folks brought to tears in this, because the connection was profound, visceral, and needed.
With the number of rituals, gatherings, and such I have brought the pelt to, and the nature of our connection, the connection I have with it is powerful and profound. My connection with wolf parts in general is not as well-developed nor intimate, as there is not the body-on/with-body and hamr-to/with-hamr connection I carry with the wolf pelt. However, there is still quite powerful and profound connections to be found here. Sometimes I work with teeth as connection to wolf Ginnreginn, and others as taufr (physical objects that are enchanted) in their own right. A lot of wolf parts, such as the phalanges and teeth, tend to be small and easy to carry, making it easier to pass on to others. I am slowly assembling a wolf bone divination kit, and having different parts is key to producing useful answers. So far, the items that are going into this divination system have obvious meaning, such as a tooth being something used to rip, tear, shred, destroy, and to eat, carrying a lot of this meaning into the divination work. I am sure as time goes on more meanings will make themselves apparent, particularly if I collect more kinds of teeth, or the need for various parts comes forward.
Whether a single tooth, a phalange, or a whole pelt, these parts of wolves provide points of connection to Wolf Ginreginn, the Wolf Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir. They provide connection to úlfheðnar, and various folks who were seen or understood as being and/or existing between human and wolf. They serve as connection points that I carry with me for personal spiritwork and for connections with others, and for connecting others to Them in kind. Sometimes, connecting with wolf parts provides connections between all of us. For me, all these ways hit me in my souls that provides a kind of feeling most often of family, pack, tribe, of being and belonging. When I work with them in spellwork and spiritwork, there is a feeling of being wholly involved.
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