The Goddesses of Yule: Goddess Skuld, Norse Goddess of Destiny
Skuld is one of the three Norns or Fates of Norse mythology. They sit beneath the great ash-tree Yggdrasil and spin the thread of destiny. They of course share many similarities with the Greek triple Moirai or Fates. Like the Moirai, they ‘shape the lives of each man from his first day to his last’ (as the Lord of the Gallows poem asserts).
The Norns are originally from the land of the Giants. Their names are Urd or Urdi ("Fate" or "That Which Was," the Norn of the Past), Verdandi or Verthandi ("Present" or "That Which is Becoming") and Skuld ("Shall-be," or "She Who is Becoming"). They represent inexorable Fate — men and gods alike are bound by their pronouncements.
Skuld as the last of the three is the Norn who fixes the length of the thread of life, or, by some accounts, unravels what Her sisters have made. She is shown veiled, as the future is unknowable.
She is sometimes considered a water spirit or even a Valkyrie, one of the swan-maidens who foretell the destiny of warriors (the word valkyrja means "She Who Chooses Warriors Destined to Die in Battle"). She rides out with the Valkyries Gunnr and Róta to choose who shall be killed. She shares this doomsayer characteristic with that Celtic Goddess of War & Prophecy, the Morrigan.
There is little else elaborated on in myths about Goddess Skuld specifically, however she was the Goddess who came through very strongly as one of the Yule Goddesses for this year - specifically with regard to the tradition of setting intentions for the New Year. Below is the guidance from the Skuld card in the Goddess Power Oracle by Colette Baron-Reid to keep in mind as you may be doing any New Year intention rituals:
“As you set your intentions for the life you desire, the Norse goddess Skuld comes to show you glimpses of your future. You experience these magical journey markers as flashes of insight and moments of inspiration, like an echo of something that exists in another dimension. It’s fun when things turn out exactly as you predicted, but remember that the essence of your intention means more than its form.
The goddess Skuld, who rules the destiny of gods and men, says remaining true to the moment is your greatest power. Allowing the self to evolve as you go and discovering new things today sets the path for destiny to unfold. The power of the present and how you respond to life’s potential is the potent fertile seed of the future. In order to claim the future, you must attend to the now. Even then, nothing is guaranteed, and everything is infused with magic.” - Goddess Power Oracle, Colette Baron-Reid
One of my favourite rituals to do on or around New Year’s eve is to craft a vision board - or what I like to call a ‘Magical Board’. I collect the images for the board as intuitively as possible and, when I have created it in this way, almost everything depicted - down to eerily specific details! - have all almost magically come to pass. I found doing them in this way seems to create some sort of magickal intent that actually works, as opposed to coming up with a set pre-conceived ‘vision’ of what I think I should like my future to look like and then scouting for images to match that. I had tried boards like that before in my early 20s (mostly filling them with the usual materialistic dross - designer clothes / fancy cars/ mansions etc I believed I wanted probably from watching too much MTV in the 90s!) There was nothing reflective of the real me in the boards not to mention any essence of any intention (beyond a generic wealth and fame!) and none of it came to pass so I’d given up on vision-boarding.
Then back in 2014 whilst on a yoga retreat I found out about this ‘intuitive’ boarding process from an amazing holistic coach who had been doing it for years to great success. I didn’t have the magazines to hand on the retreat but as soon as I got home to London I tried it and was absolutely ASTOUNDED when later in the year virtually everything I’d put on the board - which mostly centred around travel and to some destinations I had nooo idea how I would ever go to - came to pass. At the beginning of the year when I created the board I had no idea I was about to request a sabbatical from my corporate job a few months later and end up travelling all over the world for the rest of the year.
One of the most incredible images I’d felt compelled to stick on that first ‘magical board’ was a picture of a man riding a horse across a desert from a National Geographic magazine. I had no idea where in the world the picture was taken, I didn’t even stop to look at the article, I just ripped it out without really thinking as soon as I saw it and put it in the middle of my board (see the process below - this is a key part of how to do the image selection). The energy of it was so compelling - he seemed so free and whilst my conscious brain didn’t have this in mind at all, for some reason there was a part of my soul that longed to be out in the wide expanse of the desert and not stuck behind my desk in a grey, corporate building in grey, built-up London.
Later that year (by which point incidentally I’d fully resigned from my corporate job - it was my Saturn return) I was invited to visit Mongolia to create a promotional film for a yoga retreat company as a freelancer (yes, dream job!). On the course of the trip whilst on the Trans Mongolian Railway I turned to look out the window at one point and saw a man riding a horse across the desert plain - almost identical to the picture on my board I’d created about eight months earlier. When I eventually managed to dig out the original magazine I’d ripped it from it turned out the image was taken in Mongolia.
So a convert, since then I have done Magical Boarding usually every new year’s as a sort-of loose ‘year ahead’ board and/or occasionally at other points of the year as I feel pulled to do. Play around with when feels right for you - sometimes I’ve done one on my birthday or during a magickal portal - this year I did one that turned out to be evolving Elle’s Temple from a YouTube channel to this very blog and website over Samhain, a potent portal of rebirth.
Within a very short time of doing the board I’d built my website and started my blog - something I’d vaguely thought about starting for more than a year and somehow never got round to doing. The board acted in a way like an architect’s scale model or like a physical totem of my vision. It encapsulated the “essence of my intention” and the process of creating the site and blog very much organically unfolded from having that anchor point.
Sometimes my ‘year ahead’ boards have all come to pass within the year, other times some aspects happen quickly and then other parts can take longer to show up. But in the last ten years I’ve had much fun doing the magical boarding ritual and have so many incredible stories of many, many wonderful things that have come into my life. I now feel when I engage in the ritual it’s like my future self is giving me little breadcrumbs of how my life is going to evolve.
So here’s my Magical Board process:
I gather a large pile of old magazines - if you can’t get magazines even advertorials or papers you get through the post will do. Anything with words and images. You can do this digitally but I’ve found there seems to be something more magickal about the process of physically doing it (and I’ve personally found better success with my physical boards than my digital ones).
I like to light a candle, put some of my favourite music on - I particularly love the soundtrack to Amelie as it’s so creative and dream-like so it helps me get in the ‘flow zone’ but choose whatever music does that for you.
I flick quickly through magazines and notice what I’m spontaneously pulled to cut out - sometimes it’s words, phrases, quotes, colours, symbols and of course images that have a certain magnetic ‘pull’. The idea is not to judge anything I feel compelled in that moment to cut out - no matter how weird, unusual, out of my usual comfort zone etc it may be! It may not make ANY sense in the moment why you’re cutting out blue zig zag pattern curtains when you are renting ostensibly for a long term and you can’t redecorate your landlord’s house until a year later you’ll walk into a new flat and see the exact curtains you unusually felt compelled to cut out in that vision board. Breadcrumbs. The best way to sortof bypass the conscious monkey brain that will have you questioning every unusual thing you might cut out is to not stop long enough to start over-thinking an image - act on your first instinct as that’s usually on the money - rip it out quickly when those ‘flashes of insight and moments of inspiration’ strike just as Colette Baron-Reid describes in the Skuld card above. It can be an instructive process this, because it’s like an opportunity for your soul to speak to you about what it’s most yearning for and break through the domineering chatter of the monkey-mind.
Staying in the creative flow zone I’ll then ort through and layout the images on a board. Sometimes I’ll glue them then and there, other times I’ll feel that there’s more images to be added and I’ll gradually add to it over the course of the week until I feel it’s ready to be stuck down.
I then usually leave it pinned up for about a month somewhere I can see it daily but after that you can put it away and not look at it. You might dig it out years later or when you next move house and I guarantee you’ll be shocked that almost everything you put down came true! It’s truly magic.
Ways to Connect with Skuld
Do a Magical New Year Board as per the process above. Remember it’s the essence of your intention behind the board that means more than its actual form. As the Skuld card mentioned above guides - it’s fun when things turn out exactly as you predicted or exactly as your board shows but also leaving room for yourself and your destiny to unfold is important - and more magical!
Write Your New Year’s Intentions: I like to do intention-setting process rather than ‘goals’ or ‘resolutions’ as I feel like intentions have a gentler, more inviting energy rather than feeling like homework or punishment. I phrase them in a positive way rather than negative also so for example: ‘cultivate a healthy body and lifestyle’ rather than ‘lose weight’. You absolutely do not have to do this on New Year’s Eve. I sometimes think it’s better to use Yule to connect in with that dreamy energy from such a dark and still sabbat and go forward with the whole intention-setting process during Imbolc when the Spring energy is starting to wake up and there’s an energy of ‘new-ness’ in Nature. Whatever works for you. Once you’ve written them let them go and allow yourself to evolve.
Create a Ritual / Spell Jar around your intentions - you could write your intentions on a piece of paper and put them in a pinecone and then burn it or you could write them all down and put them in a small spell-jar with some magickal herbs such as rosemary to amplify your intentions or any other herb and/or crystal specific to your intention. Eg: if you’re wanting to invite more prosperity you could put turmeric and citrine. The yellow-colour of both is linked to the solar plexus which is all about confidence, self-worth, taking action on your goals, shining your light - things that can all help attract more prosperity. Or you could just write them in your journal and then refer back to it in a year to see if you followed through with your intentions.