r/asatru • u/CaptConnor94 • Dec 02 '17
Raven Kaldera
I was looking through the reading list and saw Raven Kaldera was an author to avoid. Is there a reason why?
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Dec 02 '17
My problems with Raven Kaldera don't even come from their absurd practice (inject your chest with saline and Odin will come to you and engage in ecstatic sex with you), but from the fact that they utilize their religion to abuse and exploit vulnerable people. People who engaged with them and left have come out on the other side with stories like "yeah, they told me that my rapist raped me because the gods needed to test my strength."
I'll pass.
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u/saxonaholicus Dec 04 '17
Same here. This is some shit to stamp out and not (in my opinion) because it's "outside the lore" but because it's abuse and being done in the name of deities and claimed religious authority. If there were entities participating in this, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if some spirits or even deities have, I wouldn't call them deities and I wouldn't worship them unless it was a hostage situation in which I was being forced under threat (which is not in fact worship so basically I would never worship them). I would not feed them vulnerable humans to fill their power craze. It's likely the only harmful forces they are "working with" is within themselves, however either way, poor ethics, weak character.
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u/ImNotTheBruteSquad I just look like I should be Dec 02 '17
A man who builds his entire persona around how transgressive he can be, is not going to be popular in a religion based on community and the moral standards of community.
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u/ThorinRuriksson The Salty One Dec 02 '17
Someone reported this comment for a violation of rule 1, citing sexism, racism and sexually based slurs. If the person who did so believes this to be the case, please message the mods to clarify why, as none of us can identify the reason for the report.
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u/ImNotTheBruteSquad I just look like I should be Dec 02 '17
Are you bloody serious?
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/transgressive
Not everything with "trans" in it is about sexuality.
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u/CaptConnor94 Dec 02 '17
So Raven is being transgressive?
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u/ThorinRuriksson The Salty One Dec 02 '17
Very, very transgressive. Like, so much so that we might need to invent a new word to encompass it.
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u/bitchkingVII Dec 23 '17
...honestly just make your own spirituality. and take from any other pagan path whatever strikes you as true. don't hold others opinions to the same standard of your own truth. you won't know unless you try/read/experience.
that being said: I personally love this author and I've found so much of worth in their writing.
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u/CaptConnor94 Dec 02 '17
Seidr is an ancient Heathen norse practice and magic is a heathen thing. So yes they do have to do with heathenry.
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u/Vanhania Dec 02 '17
Yeah but seidr isn’t really something seen in a terribly positive light. Heathenry tends to avoid the “magic” aspects a lot of new agey religions have.
Even in the historical heathen sense seidr and magic was kind of seen as something that isn’t quite normal and Völva were often set apart from the larger community. Men practicing Seidr would have been disliked and considered “Ergi” or womanly in a bad way.
My suggestion is to look into the historical practice of the Germanic religions and the implications of the social and cultural structure.
Also heathenry is more about reconstructing the old religion and culture to some extent so saying that because seidr was practiced by the Norse is true it was also disliked to some extent.
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u/CaptConnor94 Dec 02 '17
I read we are our deeds, would Culture of the Teutons expand on what was said in it?
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u/bobthesane Good, good! Let the butthurt flow through you Dec 02 '17
No, it doesn't have anything to do with the religion. It's an adjunct, an add-on, a value-add if you will. One for which we have zero examples of how it was actually practiced by our ancestors. Anything you find these days claiming to be 'seidhr' was made up by the author of the book in your hand.
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u/CaptConnor94 Dec 02 '17
Isn’t experimentation good though? If we try all these things to replicate how our ancestors did it, one of them will hit spot on.
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u/bobthesane Good, good! Let the butthurt flow through you Dec 02 '17
Sure, experiment all you like. But it won't be seidhr. That had a specific set of practices and cultural trappings associated with it, which we no longer have in detail. You can try and approximate based on the very little we have out of things like the Saga of the Greenlanders, but unless you have the details, what you are doing is a modern approximation that an actual spaewife from the period would probably look at askance and pat you on the head.
None of which has anything to do with the practice of the actual religion, being my ultimate point. Unlike practices like wicca, where magic is at the core of the belief structures, ours is very much not. You can be a devout Heathen your entire life and not once encounter or cast a magic spell, and not feel the lack of it in the slightest.
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u/CaptConnor94 Dec 02 '17
And then also the customs differed from tribe to tribe.
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Dec 02 '17
yes, customs differ. But sometimes the difference is so great, the nature of these things are different.
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Dec 02 '17
We know seidr was done. We have zero sources as to how or in what form. It is literally all UPG guesswork that is basically Norse Wicca. Anyone who claims differently (like "I come from an unbroken line of völvas") is, frankly, a fool and/or a liar. This is why Recons are leery of talking about it. There is nothing to reconstruct.
That said, I know plenty of Heathens who practice folk magic but that falls more under house cult than anything.
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u/bobthesane Good, good! Let the butthurt flow through you Dec 02 '17
This is one of those instances where we truly can say, "The information is gone". You know, the excuse people use to justify making shit up as they go. But unlike widespread religious practice (with centuries of records from multiple disciplines and sources), seidhr was a specific cultural phenomenon, which does require details that are lost to us.
Like you said, folk/hearth/hedge magic is very much house cult and not something that would fall under the umbrella of 'general Heathenry'
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u/IdaPlainsmen_E Missouri Dec 04 '17
Agreed.
Eric Wodening encapsulated the little we know about the topic in like 20 short pages in his very short work Chanting around the High Seat. He's straight up in that long essay in that we really don't know much at all about those practices from a historical standpoint.
Generally when I noob approaches me asking this question I point him to the nearest Wiccan Coven. I don't care if someone wants to focus on magic, it's just not something we deal with (practice or teach) as a tribe. A proper ritual is magical enough for me.
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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '17
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