What do you think of Wicca?

[Astreja]

Your inner norse goddess. There's a story there, you need to share more details.

I blame it all on pretty rocks, in particular a rounded piece of quartz that I bought at The Forks, a touristy collection of shops and restaurants that I occasionally frequent.  The last time I got deeply into the New Age juice was in the late '90s when I was struggling to stay sane and happy in the throes of a soon-to-be-as-dead-as-a-Norwegian-Blue marriage.  Among other things I was collecting semi-precious stones, resuming a hobby that I had had as a child, and this particular piece of quartz ended up travelling in my pants pocket more often than not.  I used it as a mental anchor, something to focus on when I felt overwhelmed.

One afternoon at work in my IT job, I was in the break room and had this piece of quartz in my hand and was meditating on it.  For some reason I started imagining that I was talking with O­ðinn (this was not long after I had started studying Scandinavian mythology), and "heard" the Allfather call me "uh stray' a."  Wot, I have a name to go with all my magical meanderings?  Kewl!

A bit of casual research into divine names came up with several possibilities.  Astarte didn't quite fit.  Astraea (the goddess better known as Virgo) was phonetically correct, and it's so nice of all those courthouses to put up statues of Her with scales and sword and blindfold.  However, I couldn't help but notice that the goddess variously known as Eostre and Ostara hadn't been heard from for a while, so I put an Icelandic/Old Norse spin on the spelling to get the name Astreja, and appointed Myself the goddess of the Vernal Equinox (but only in the Northern Hemisphere).  Later on, I added chocolate, punctuation, and Random Equipment Malfunctions to My divine dossier.

And I'm pretty sure that trouble-making piece of quartz is still somewhere in the house, probably in the bowl of shiny rocks in the living room.