establishing cultus for a regional tutelary deity?

And obviously this is in the wrong place... sorry book club folks for the iappropriate placement. I've messaged Admin, so hopefully the thread can be moved.

I am of the mind that you aren't liable to create a being such as the one you are describing, so much as it'll already be there or perhaps an existing divinity would have to be brought into the area (ie the worship of the deity in question) to take up that role...that is, if the God/dess in question desires to take that role.

As for the psychic drawing method, I'd lean towards one of the more detailed drawings you spoke of unless there is something drawing (no pun intended) you hard towards the image that you have provided. I'm only vaguely familiar with the runes for divination (ie: I don't practice them, though I did dabble at one point...really ought to find that rune set I made) but would think that you should probably go to them rather heavily in this matter and see if you can make any connection to a spirit that is accepting of or fits into this role.

The last thing you want to do is stomp all over an existing spirit that fills this niche and is willing to have dealings with you. Note, I'm not saying that you go and actively search for a native spirit and then act like it fills a role that it doesn't...in my experience it isn't just the human Native Americans that take umbrage with that sort of behavior, our spirits traveled to this land with us, new immigrants continue to arrive and then there are others that are born of this land that weren't necessarily here before the coming of the Europeans.

If psychedelics are used in a sacred manner, I see no trouble (aside from possible legal ones, depending on the psychedelic) at all with using them (responsibly) in your quest but I don't have the experiences there to make any real suggestions there.

Vermont Métis are writing books man, why cant you get access to their trads when youre local? They might be metis but theyve been there for centuries.
www.goodreads.com/book/show/1317176.American_Mixed_Race

Ive lived in different parts of north america, I never had trouble finding an indian. All I had to do was go to the toughest jobs, the roughest area or the cheapest market. There they were.

clockwork:  Thank you again for your feedback.  I appreciate that you have taken the time to respond to my questions.  The tenor of your responses, however, leads me to believe that you are perhaps not fully aware of the broader cultural context I operate in.  I've never had trouble "finding and Indian".  Abanaki people are part of my community.  they are my friends, co-workers and neighbors.  Some keep traditional custom, most are fully assimilated into Vermont culture.  The Abanaki community is largely christian, historically Roman Catholic, and I literally cannot think of a better way to alienate the folks I know (friends, co-workers and neighbors, remember?  This is a small state and we all know each other fairly well.) than to approach them and with the rough equivalent of "Speak to me of the Old Ways of your people so that I may render proper worship to the rivers and mountains."  Pretty offensive stuff when you think about it, even without the history of colonialism between us.
    I would also like to address the impression I get from your responses that the best approach to my problem is to go to native folklore to enrich my spiritual practice.  The fact is that is is explicitly what the Indian folks I know (Abanaki and those belonging to other nations) have repeatedly requested that white people cease and desist. I am very grateful for the teachings I've received from Indian elders, and I have absolutely no intention of trying to bully information out of them which they have made clear is a spiritual heritage reserved for their own people.  The whole reason I am a heathen is the admonishment I received from an elder to look for the spiritual truths I was seeking among my own ancestors.
    I really don't mean to sound hash or confrontational, but I don't think you understand the context or consequences of what you are suggesting

So the gawi (or gau) is an ancient form of territorial organization used by migration era germanic tribes. The best translation of the concept is district or shire. To understand for the gawi as it applies to my religious experience, I need to give a bit of background on how I came to practice my form of heathenry.

When my wife and I began to discuss the religious upbringing of our children we came to the conclusion that they would be raised primarily in my tradition. For one thing, I am just more religiously inclined than she is, and for another her particular form of religious witchcraft is idiosyncratic to the point that it really only applies to her.

The problem I faced is that I was practicing a highly blended form of heathenry drawing from many sometimes conflicting streams. Having taken on the sacred responsibility of religious education, I felt the need to systematize m practice. I began to apply Proto-Germanic vocabulary where I had been using a cumbersome blend of Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, and Old High German. I chose PGmc as a way to weave these elements together since it is the root of all of them (and, being a reconstructed language you could also take the opposite view and say that it is built from all of them). Also, because the systematizing of my custom would, by necessity, be a creative and imaginative effort, PGmc would give me a good traditional framework on which to build my new personal and family culture while minimizing appropriation of vocabulary and concepts from living traditional Germanic cultures. Furthermore, PGmc is the language of the elder runic futhark, which is the basis of my magical/mystical practice and is therefore the most magically potent language for my purposes.

The priority throughout this process was to create a system which was magically potent, religously effective, and authentic to my lived experience.

It took me about a year to lay out the framework for my custom (which I refer to as siduz, meaning custom/tradition, as distinct from furni-siduz "ancient custom" which it is not).   The next step I wanted to take was to root my custom in my own sacred geography, to contextualize it as a local tradition.  This is how I came to the concept of the gawi.

As a religious concept, gawi is basically the geographic reflection of the heathen theme of "that which is within" (usually called innangarth) and "that which is without" (utangarth).  The gawi represents the land which is the sacred context of a local tradition.  This is my own development as far as I know.  Historically, the gawi would have been a political and administrative unit within the territory of a tribe.  It is my homeland, where I was raised and where I am raising my family.  I looked at cultural context, political context and natural/geographic context and found that in my case all three aligned pretty well.  My gawi corresponds roughly to the upper reaches of the Winooski river watershed, which happens to correspond very closely with the boundaries of Washington county.

I hope this helps to understand what I mean when I talk about my gawi, and also maybe answers the question of why I choose to apply PGmc to religious vocabulary.

Does the mask shape the wearer or the wearer shape the mask? I think the answer has to be "yes". I went through this a bit when I was beginning my devotion to Frijjo Birkijoniz. I have a blog post about how I this relationship evolved here.  Suffice it to say that the goddess was fully formed and fully herself already, but when I began to call her by the name by which I know her many elements fell into place, and others were revealed for the first time.  Obviously I believe that the gods are real, distinct, individual persons, or I would not be here.  I do, however, have many more questions than answers when it comes to the exact nature and identity of that personhood.  

I do think that our human imaginations have a role in the way the deities' personhood manifests in the world.  The names we call them by, the symbols and icons we use for them do shape their expression, if not their nature. I don't think we can force them to be something they're not, or deny their divine agency, but part of our human power does seem to be our ability to use our imaginations and creative actions to provide them with new avenues of manifestation.  This is especially true of our ability to craft names... perhaps the most powerful of all human magic.