Changelings are someone who differs immensely from their family due to cause and effect and various events that may have occurred? Well, this is perhaps the interesting part. It goes deeper than just being different. Nothing can change in a way that has no connection to reality itself. Every changeling of any kind doesn’t just bear a scar, they bare what amounts to a rune.
Some of the oldest runes (and I use the term rune in the original Norse sense as a spirit mark / mystery) generally show up as either animal markings, animalistic traits, or in the case of late onset examples, mysterious animal attacks that cause a near death experience. These changelings usually have a profound sense of vital forces in the world, and often have their awareness opened to things that are normally mysteries to any other than the animal kingdom. These, if they survived, used to become either shamans or hermits, but usually showed profound gifts of healing or vision either way.
These are the changelings who are born with or receive the mask, but there are others. There are changelings born with the rune of death, often born stillborn, or with cowls over their heads that threaten their breathing or in some way that would seem certain to kill them or threaten their survival. These death changelings often live to a ripe old age, but they never seem totally alive. Like they walk between the living sunlit world and the realm between. These usually have gifts of mediumship and luck bending. Either being jinxes or being able to lift misfortune from others depending on what their experience has taught them I guess.
In the case of late comers to the rune of death, they sometimes don’t develop the “sight”, but they generally have an excellent intuition for what some might call fate, and generally are very deeply in touch with how the souls around them are developing.
What rune is the witches mark? The witches mark is the rune of chaos and it shows up in a variety of ways. The influence of this rune is to bring instability or radical change. It flares up in seasons when the flow of energy has become stagnant in an environment.
There is a spirit mark that doesn’t yet have an identifiable change associated with it. Let’s bare with the limitations of science, shall we? It’s called among other things the weirding. These children are generally very precocious as youngsters, not having any inheritance to account for it, and their minds often get really seriously bent. They tend to develop mental health issues early. Those who bear the weirding are generally wildly creative and conceptions of the possible often seem entirely irrelevant around them.
Is that what some might call a black sheep in a family? Depends on why they are a black sheep. Perhaps a better metaphor for all changelings would be dark horses. The person who is the exception to most if not all the rules, and either burns out or falls ill, or makes radical alterations to peoples perceptions. This is why legends and myths survive of them today. The legendary Merlin was a changeling. Born to his mother supposedly in a dream and conceived on her by a sea spirit.
Reminds me of a kid I knew in the 5th grade. He had a lot of allergies and dreamt up really creative stories about being from Neptune. Yet no one seemed driven to pick on him, not even the bigger boys. Physical frailties are common in changelings.
In fact, you may have known one or more changelings in your life though they tend to prefer their own company, or in some cases the company of animals. That is how you would know a changeling. It is also why the Celts came up with their weeding ritual. They would conduct a lottery when they thought there was a fey, or in other words a changeling, among them. But only when they didn’t already know who it was. If they already knew who it was, they would just exile this person who would then often be taken in by the druids, most typically joining the order of Ovates. Ovates are seers, oracles.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~