{"id":574,"date":"2026-09-08T08:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T08:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/?p=574"},"modified":"2026-09-08T08:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T08:50:19","slug":"pass-the-volsi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/2026\/09\/08\/pass-the-volsi\/","title":{"rendered":"Pass the V\u00f6lsi!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Horse Sacrifice, Household Ritual and the Strangest Dinner Guest in Norse Literature<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Today’s story comes with an adults-only warning!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story contains horse anatomy, ritual handling of said anatomy, medieval sexual humour, an unusually enthusiastic old woman and a disguised Christian king who turns up uninvited and ruins everyone\u2019s evening. It may also permanently change the way you react when someone says, \u201cWould you like to come round for dinner?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story is called V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em>, meaning The Tale of V\u00f6lsi<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may preserve a rare glimpse of Pagan ritual conducted within an ordinary household. It could also be a Christian writer\u2019s deliberately ridiculous parody of Paganism. Most likely, it contains an uncomfortable mixture of both. Our main question is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> preserve a genuine fragment of pre-Christian ritual, or is it medieval Christian satire made from ingredients that merely looked Pagan? Before we hear the story, I have a question for you all: What is the strangest object you can imagine someone passing around the dinner table?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless somebody has already said, \u201cA preserved stallion\u2019s penis wrapped in linen and leeks,\u201d the family in tonight\u2019s story has everyone beaten. And if somebody did say that, I\u2019m not sure whether to give them a prize or quietly reconsider inviting them to future gatherings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our story takes place at a remote farm in northern Norway. The household consists of an elderly farmer and his equally elderly wife. They have a lively son and a clever daughter. Two enslaved people also live with them, one man and one woman. The tale deliberately places them far away from other settlements. They are portrayed as an isolated household that has remained stubbornly Pagan while the rest of Norway is supposedly moving towards Christianity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One autumn, the household\u2019s stallion is butchered. While the animal is being prepared, the male thrall cuts off its penis and is about to throw it away. The farmer\u2019s son happens to pass by and sees it. Being exactly as mature as we might expect a young man to be when unexpectedly presented with an enormous horse penis, he grabs it. He then runs over to where his mother, sister and the enslaved woman are sitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He waves it at the enslaved woman and announces that it certainly wouldn\u2019t remain limp if she put it between her legs. The enslaved woman laughs. His sister is considerably less amused. She tells him to throw the disgusting thing away. At this point, any sensible mother might have agreed with her daughter and told her son to stop waving bits of horse anatomy at people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This mother does not….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looks at the penis and decides that it shouldn\u2019t be wasted. She apparently sees something that the rest of the household has failed to recognise. Potential! No, not what you’re all thinking! The old woman takes it, dries or preserves it and wraps it carefully in linen with leeks or similar herbs. She stores it somewhere safe and begins treating it as a significant object (I know what you’re all thinking and shame on you!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narrator tells us that through the power of the Devil, the preserved organ grows stronger and increases until it can stand upright beside her. That statement immediately tells us something about the person preserving the story. Whatever the household believes is happening, the Christian narrator explains its power as demonic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old woman names the object V\u00f6lsi<\/strong>. Every evening, after the meal has been served, she brings V\u00f6lsi into the room. She places it in her husband\u2019s lap and recites a verse. Her husband must then take it, compose a verse of his own and pass it to the next person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00f6lsi travels around the table from one member of the household to another. Some participate more enthusiastically than others. Each person\u2019s verse reflects their own character and feelings about the ritual. Some verses are ceremonial. Some are openly sexual. Some express disgust, and some make it clear that the speaker is only taking part because they have been given absolutely no choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, every participant repeats the same formula:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00deiggi M\u01ebrnir \u00feetta bl\u00e6ti.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is usually translated as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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May M\u01ebrnir receive this offering.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We’ll return to M\u01ebrnir later because nobody knows with certainty who\u2014or what\u2014the name refers to. For now, just imagine the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dinner has finished. Everyone is sitting around the room. Then the elderly mother enters carrying a preserved erect horse penis wrapped in linen and leeks. She places it in her husband\u2019s lap and makes him compose poetry about it. He passes it onwards. The son continues making sexual jokes. The daughter would rather be anywhere else. The male thrall complains that he is being forced to accept what he calls the red-nosed object. The enslaved woman appears considerably less horrified than some of the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t just a family dinner. It’s dinner, poetry night and mandatory horse-penis handling all rolled into one. We don\u2019t know how often the ceremony supposedly took place, but the story presents it as a regular household practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then King \u00d3l\u00e1fr arrives. The king in this tale is \u00d3l\u00e1fr Haraldsson, later remembered as Saint \u00d3l\u00e1fr. The historical \u00d3l\u00e1fr lost power in Norway and fled east. The story places this episode in 1029, when he was attempting to regain his kingdom. According to the tale, \u00d3l\u00e1fr hears that some people in remote areas remain Pagan. He decides to travel through the region and investigate. He is accompanied by two men, usually identified as Finnr \u00c1rnason and the poet \u00deorm\u00f3\u00f0r Kolbr\u00fanarsk\u00e1ld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three men disguise themselves in grey cloaks and approach the isolated farm. To conceal their identities, they all claim to be called Gr\u00edmr<\/strong>, a name associated with disguise or concealment. That is their first mistake. If three strange men arrive at your house, all wearing grey cloaks and all claiming to have exactly the same name, something suspicious is happening. Either one is a king in disguise, or they are about to try selling you a new roof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The farmer nevertheless welcomes them and allows them to stay. That evening, everyone gathers for the meal. Eventually, the old woman enters carrying V\u00f6lsi. She begins the ceremony as normal. She recites her verse and places V\u00f6lsi in her husband\u2019s lap. Her husband contributes his verse and passes it onwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00f6lsi continues around the room, accompanied by sexual jokes, embarrassment, complaints and the repeated appeal to M\u01ebrnir. The disguised visitors are expected to join in. Fortunately for \u00d3l\u00e1fr, one of his companions is a talented poet. The three strangers are able to improvise verses and avoid revealing their identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, V\u00f6lsi reaches the king. \u00d3l\u00e1fr takes the object and produces a verse of his own. But instead of passing it respectfully to the next person, he throws it to the household dog. The dog grabs V\u00f6lsi. The old woman is devastated. Her carefully preserved sacred object, which she has lovingly wrapped in linen and supported with leeks, has just been turned into a chew toy by a man she invited into her home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00d3l\u00e1fr then removes his disguise and announces that he is the king. He preaches Christianity to the household, and the family eventually agrees to accept baptism. Within the story, this is presented as the end of their bizarre Pagan practice and another victory for Saint \u00d3l\u00e1fr. The household converts, the king continues his mission, and V\u00f6lsi makes one of the least dignified exits in the whole of Old Norse literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before we go any further, I have a question for everyone: If three strangers arrived at your home, lied about their identities, mocked your household ritual and fed your sacred object to the dog, who would you consider the villain of the story? I\u2019m not saying \u00d3l\u00e1fr was a terrible dinner guest, but he certainly wasn\u2019t getting invited back! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now that we have heard the story, we need to ask where it came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> survives only in Flateyjarb\u00f3k<\/strong>, or the Book of Flatey. Flateyjarb\u00f3k<\/em> is one of the greatest surviving Icelandic medieval manuscripts. Work on it began in 1387 and continued into the 1390s. It contains kings\u2019 sagas, poems, genealogies, annals and shorter stories, including material that doesn\u2019t survive anywhere else. The manuscript was produced by Christian scribes. The priest J\u00f3n \u00de\u00f3r\u00f0arson copied much of its earlier material, including most of the saga in which our tale appears. Within Flateyjarb\u00f3k<\/em>, V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> is inserted into the extended saga of Saint \u00d3l\u00e1fr. This is extremely important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tale isn\u2019t preserved in a Pagan household manual entitled One Hundred and One Uses for Leftover Horse Parts<\/em>. It appears inside a Christian narrative celebrating a royal saint and his struggle against the remaining traces of Paganism. The story claims to describe events in 1029, but its only surviving manuscript was produced roughly 350 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put that into perspective, it would be a little like someone today writing down a detailed account of a private household ritual supposedly performed during the reign of King Charles II, without possessing an eyewitness report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tale claims some connection with older poetry or older verses, but we can\u2019t prove how old those verses are. The surviving language, narrative and explanation have all passed through medieval Christian writers and scribes. We therefore have no evidence that the author personally witnessed a V\u00f6lsi ceremony. We also have no independent Viking Age account telling us that Norwegian families routinely passed preserved horse penises around the dinner table. Doesn\u2019t mean the entire story was invented though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medieval writers often created stories from a mixture of inherited traditions, familiar customs, folklore, jokes and their own imaginations. Even a hostile or comic account can preserve genuine details. The question isn\u2019t simply whether the story is completely true or completely false. The better question is: what ingredients did the author use, and how old might some of those ingredients have been (by ingredients, I’m not referring to the horse knob)?<\/p>\n\n\n

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The first important ingredient is the horse. Although we can\u2019t prove that V\u00f6lsi was a genuine object of worship, the stallion wasn\u2019t chosen randomly. Horses carried considerable religious, social and economic importance throughout the pre-Christian North. Archaeological and textual evidence connects them with sacrifice, ritual feasting, burial, status, travel and supernatural knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Horse remains have been discovered in graves and other ritual contexts. The sagas also remember horses being sacrificed and their meat eaten during communal gatherings. During Christianisation, eating horsemeat became a religious and legal issue in parts of Scandinavia. This wasn\u2019t a simple disagreement about what should be served for dinner. Horse meat had become closely associated with Pagan sacrifice and communal ritual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A stallion could also represent strength, virility, reproduction and the prosperity of the herd. Its sexual organ makes those associations rather difficult to overlook. Older scholarship frequently described stories like this as evidence of a fertility cult<\/strong>. That is possible, but we need to be careful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word fertility<\/em> is sometimes used so broadly that practically every animal, seed, phallic object, female supernatural being and drinking vessel gets placed inside one enormous fertility cult. The V\u00f6lsi ritual may have been connected with sexual or animal fertility. It might equally have concerned household prosperity, livestock, continuity, abundance or the preservation of the stallion\u2019s strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is that the tale never clearly explains what the family expects V\u00f6lsi to do. They don\u2019t ask it for children. They don\u2019t specifically request a successful harvest, healthy animals or more stallions. They simply continue the ritual and repeat the request that M\u01ebrnir receive the offering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the author were describing a familiar Pagan ceremony, perhaps the original audience was expected to understand its purpose. Alternatively, the ritual may have been invented mainly to make the household appear obscene and ridiculous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phallic objects and stones have been discovered in Scandinavian archaeological settings. Some may have carried religious, protective or sexual significance. Their existence shows that phallic symbolism wasn\u2019t foreign to the pre-Christian North. However, it doesn\u2019t prove that every phallic stone represents a fertility god or that any of them were connected with the ritual described in this story. A stone shaped like a penis is certainly worth discussing, but we shouldn\u2019t immediately label it \u201cFreyr\u2019s sacred knob\u201d and consider the investigation complete…just saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern discussions also frequently connect V\u00f6lsi with Freyr. Freyr is associated with prosperity, sexuality, animals and the famous phallic image commonly identified with him. However, V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> never says that the household is worshipping Freyr. The repeated formula is addressed to M\u01ebrnir, not Freyr. A connection with Freyr isn\u2019t impossible, but it remains an interpretation. It isn\u2019t something the story tells us directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what do we think the household believed V\u00f6lsi was doing for them? Was it protecting the family? Preserving the stallion\u2019s strength? Encouraging fertility? Honouring an unnamed female power? Or had the old woman simply found an unusual hobby and taken it much further than anyone expected?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the most interesting features of the tale is that the ritual is controlled by the elderly woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The husband doesn\u2019t create V\u00f6lsi. The son finds the organ, but he initially treats it as a sexual joke. It is the mother who recognises it as something worth preserving. She wraps it, stores it, names it and brings it into the household ceremony. She also controls everyone else\u2019s participation. Even her husband must receive V\u00f6lsi when she places it in his lap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This could preserve a memory of women directing domestic religious practices. Accounts of public sacrifice often focus on kings, jarls and male household leaders, partly because medieval literature is generally more interested in male political authority. It doesn\u2019t mean women lacked important religious roles within the household. Women managed substantial areas of domestic life, including food production, textiles, storage and the internal running of the home. Ritual conducted within that space may also have fallen under female authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the story may contain another layer of humour and criticism. Medieval literature often portrayed sexually assertive or magically knowledgeable older women as comic, dangerous or socially disruptive. The old woman\u2019s devotion to V\u00f6lsi is presented as excessive. Her husband participates but shows considerably less enthusiasm. She becomes the object\u2019s chief guardian and defender. The Christian storyteller may therefore be mocking Paganism, female authority, old age and female sexuality all at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The household\u2019s reactions also reveal differences in power. The daughter can openly express her disgust. The enslaved people have less freedom to refuse. The male thrall\u2019s verse complains that he takes the object unwillingly. What appears to be a communal ritual isn\u2019t necessarily voluntary for everyone. We might ask whether V\u00f6lsi is truly bringing the household together\u2014or whether the old woman is forcing everyone to participate in something only she deeply values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s look at the verses. V\u00f6lsi isn\u2019t passed silently from person to person. Everyone must speak. The verses are presented as lausav\u00edsur<\/em>, individual stanzas created in response to an immediate situation. Each participant reveals something through their verse. Some embrace the sexual humour. Others express reluctance or disgust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, everyone returns to the same fixed formula:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00deiggi M\u01ebrnir \u00feetta bl\u00e6ti.<\/strong>
May M\u01ebrnir receive this offering.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This combination of improvisation and repetition gives the scene a ritual structure. The words change, but the refrain remains the same. It also means nobody can quietly pass V\u00f6lsi beneath the table and hope not to be noticed. Everyone must hold it, address it and produce poetry. It’s essentially the most uncomfortable speaking circle ever devised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we have the linen and leeks. One stanza describes V\u00f6lsi as enlarged and raised, provided with linen and supported by leeks. Linen makes practical sense as wrapping material. The leeks may have helped preserve the object, but they may also carry symbolic significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Words connected with linen and leeks appear together in some much earlier Germanic runic inscriptions. This has led scholars to wonder whether the phrase in V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> preserves old ritual or magical language. Leeks may have been associated with health, growth, potency or preservation. While it doesn\u2019t mean there was a universal leek spell practised unchanged for centuries, it does show that the medieval author may have inherited the combination through folklore, poetry or verbal tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, it is a small detail that makes the story difficult to dismiss as a completely random invention. The author may have known something old\u2014even if that old material was being used to tell a joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And now we reach the greatest mystery in the story. Who, or what, are M\u01ebrnir? The name appears throughout the ritual, but the tale never explains it. Its grammatical form seems to be plural, suggesting a group of beings rather than one individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M\u01ebrnir has been interpreted in several ways. The name may refer to giantesses, female supernatural powers, d\u00edsir or beings associated with the earth or an underworld ritual. Some scholars have attempted to connect M\u01ebrnir with Ska\u00f0i or other named figures. Others have explored possible links with words concerning crushing, grinding or making tender. However, there is no interpretation accepted by everyone. Even our translation, \u201cMay M\u01ebrnir receive this offering,\u201d leaves us with an unnamed and unexplained recipient. It creates an unusual dilemma. Is V\u00f6lsi actually being worshipped?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old woman certainly treats it with reverence, but the repeated words may indicate that V\u00f6lsi is the offering<\/strong>, not the deity receiving it. Calling this \u201cthe worship of a horse penis\u201d may therefore oversimplify the scene. It could be a preserved body part used as the focus of a ritual offering directed towards completely different beings. It doesn’t make the evening less strange, but it does change its possible religious meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now we can return to our central question. Does V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> preserve genuine Pagan practice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are good reasons to think it might contain older material. Horses genuinely carried religious importance. Horse sacrifice and ritual feasting are attested elsewhere. Phallic symbolism existed in Scandinavian culture. Linen and leeks may preserve older verbal traditions. The ritual takes place in the home and is led by a woman, which could reflect religious activity overlooked by sources focusing upon kings and temples. The ceremony also has a repeated formula, structured movement and expected participation. It feels more developed than a completely random dirty joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are equally strong reasons for caution. The tale survives only in a late fourteenth-century Christian manuscript. It appears within the saga of Saint \u00d3l\u00e1fr and ends with the saint destroying the ritual object and converting the household. The narrator explicitly attributes V\u00f6lsi\u2019s power to the Devil. The isolated family is portrayed as ignorant, sexually ridiculous and spiritually misguided. \u00d3l\u00e1fr doesn\u2019t have to confront a wise and powerful Pagan leader. He defeats an elderly woman who has become emotionally attached to a preserved horse penis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is extremely effective Christian propaganda. If you wanted a Christian audience to believe that Paganism was filthy, foolish and unworthy of serious consideration, this story would do the job beautifully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scholar Clive Tolley addressed the problem directly in an article titled \u201cV\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr: Pagan Lore or Christian Lie?\u201d<\/strong> The difficulty is that those aren\u2019t the only two possibilities. A fictional or hostile story can still be constructed from genuine traditional material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recent scholarship uses the idea of the paganesque<\/strong>. Something paganesque appears Pagan to a medieval Christian audience without necessarily providing an accurate description of historical Paganism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The horse, phallus, old woman, herbs, verses and mysterious supernatural beings combine to create something that feels convincingly heathen. But the scene may tell us just as much about how fourteenth-century Christians imagined Paganism as it does about religious practice in 1029.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The safest conclusion is that V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> isn\u2019t reliable evidence of a widespread cult in which Norse households worshipped preserved horse penises. I see some of you are disappointed….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may still contain fragments of older ritual, symbolic language and domestic custom that were reshaped into comedy and conversion propaganda. In other words, the author may have invented the meal, but some of the ingredients were probably real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My own feeling is that V\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> should neither be accepted literally nor dismissed completely. It’s too late, too Christian and far too deliberately comic to serve as a straightforward record of Viking Age religion. At the same time, it contains details that connect with wider evidence concerning horses, household religion, phallic imagery, poetic performance and the ritual authority of women. The story sits somewhere between memory, folklore, satire and propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also reminds us that medieval people weren\u2019t solemn figures walking around in muddy wool discussing fate all day. They laughed at dirty jokes, embarrassed one another, argued over family customs and sometimes found themselves holding something they would much rather have left alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if any of you decide to revive this particular household tradition, please remember three things. Make sure everybody consents, keep it away from the dog, and never invite three strangers called Gr\u00edmr to dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so our tale comes to an end \u2014 with a household, a preserved horse penis, an increasingly enthusiastic evening ritual, and King \u00d3l\u00e1fr probably wondering what in the Nine Realms he had just walked into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As wonderfully bizarre as V\u00f6lsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr<\/em> sounds to us today, underneath all the comedy it leaves us with a fascinating little glimpse of household ritual, fertility, luck, old customs, and the awkward meeting point between older Norse practices and Christianity. We can\u2019t know how widespread a ceremony like this really was, or how much the storyteller exaggerated things for comic or religious effect, but one thing is certain \u2014 somebody thought this story was worth writing down, and nearly a thousand years later we\u2019re still talking about that poor horse\u2019s penis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If nothing else, tonight has taught us an important lesson: when somebody says, \u201cI\u2019ve found an interesting bit of Norse lore for Learning Night,\u201d perhaps ask a few follow-up questions before agreeing to attend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for joining me on this wonderfully strange journey through V\u00f6lsi. May your hearth be warm, your luck be good, your ale be plentiful\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026and may nobody ever pass you a preserved horse penis at dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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References for the accompanying notes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The primary text survives in Flateyjarb\u00f3k<\/em> within \u00d3l\u00e1fs saga helga<\/em>. The surviving verses and textual notes are available through the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages database<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clive Tolley examines the tale\u2019s reliability and Christian framing in \u201cV\u01eblsa \u00fe\u00e1ttr: Pagan Lore or Christian Lie?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth Ashman Rowe provides background on Flateyjarb\u00f3k<\/em> and its scribes in \u201cCultural Paternity in the<\/u> Flateyjarb\u00f3k \u00d3l\u00e1fs saga<\/em>\u201d<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merrill Kaplan\u2019s 2024 book, The Paganesque and The Tale of V\u01eblsi<\/em>, explores the construction of apparently Pagan material in medieval literature. A scholarly review is available through Indiana University<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Horse Sacrifice, Household Ritual and the Strangest Dinner Guest in Norse Literature Today’s story comes with an adults-only warning! This story contains horse anatomy, ritual handling of said anatomy, medieval sexual humour, an unusually enthusiastic old woman and a disguised Christian king who turns up uninvited and ruins everyone\u2019s evening. It may also permanently change […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teachings-and-mythology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wyrd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}