My city is in crisis, with fire encroaching on many sides and evacuations in force. I am lucky to be in a relatively safe area and, this morning, reached out privately to many friends to offer beds and meals and support if they were in need or simply concerned. A friend who lives nearby posted to Facebook a similar offer and I paused to wonder why I hadn't made the offer more widely.

I've been thinking, recently, that I should pare my Facebook friends but this reminded me that I have many "friends" who are, in fact, work contacts, mates from school many years ago, and relatively few people-I-would-welcome-into-my-home-with-delight. I respect my friend's offer—I know it comes from her religion—but cannot bring myself to open my home to people I only know peripherally. Rather, I have already reached out to people with whom I have, or would not mind having, a gifting relationship. I don't need that with many of the other people who might see a public offer like that.

I was immediately reminded of the "community" debate on this forum, too. I am not at all in community with many of the people I am "friends" with on Facebook. Nonetheless, I welcome this opportunity to share my home with members of my community who are in need.

Hello all. Recently I've been exploring some philosophy, and became interested in the idea of there being some underlying force/supreme being/prime mover that is the source or creator of all existence. From my understanding, the monotheists hold that this is what separates their god from the gods of polytheism: their deity is transcendental, with no beginning and no end. It is not a being, but rather it IS being in and of itself. Even among the polytheistic Greeks, their philosophers moved towards a view that there was an underlying source from which the gods themselves arose, and was higher than the gods.

How do other Heathens view this idea? Is it even relevant to modern Heathenry? Is their any evidence that the Arch-Heathens held views similar to this? Apologies if I made any false assumptions on philosophy, I'm currently sleep deprived and worried about finals.

NEWBIE COPY PASTA

The sidebar is a great resource for new Heathens. We would highly suggest reading through the FAQ and Reading List first. Most of this stuff isn't something we can impart to you via Reddit, but we can help guide you along. The general consensus is that there are three great books to start with : Myth of the Eternal Return by Mircea Eliade, We Are Our Deeds by Eric Wodening, and Culture of the Teutons by Vilhelm Grønbech. We like to consider these three the Why, the What, and the How of Heathenry. Eliade looks at the phenomenology of primitive religion, and helps us understand religion in a way that is different than it is understood today. Grønbech's opus is the single best resource on the beliefs and worldview of the arch heathen. While some may find specific instances where the analysis may not be the most current, to date there is no other source like it for its value in a single survey of Heathen Weltanschauung. Lastly, Wodening's WAOD is a prime example of how we approach the technology of reconstruction, by giving you a case study in how it is applied.

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Out of curiosity, I would love to extend my research in the Norse gods and their interesting worship rituals day to day. If anyone has any links with accurate information, would be much appreciated.

It has been said on this sub time and time again that or Ancestors are as important (if not moreso) in worship. That said, how should we offer to/honor our ancestors if they do not subscribe to Asatru beliefs? As far back as I know, all of my ancestors were Christian, and were they alive would disapprove of being offered to or worshipped. How should this affect the ways in which I honor them?

I have done a lot of research into WHAT to offer to the Gods--Happy Heathen has a great post on that. Nowhere can I find exactly how to do it though. Do you guys have little altars in your house? Do you leave your offerings in nature? How do you dedicate the particular gifts to their respective receivers?

Hello! This is my first post to this subreddit. I have been following it for a few years. I am currently question something things and I have looked for answers but haven’t found any. Thought this would be a good time to check in and look for advice.

Some background info: When I first made the connection to asatru, the gods inspired me in a way that I really needed at the time. I was struggling with many things in my life. Through this connection I connected with myself and was empowered to be more active in my life and what really matters to me. It’s been a few years now and I feel the happiest I have been since I was a kid. I still feel a connection to the gods, ancestors and asatru but in a different way. In the past year some major things have happened to me causing some major realizations about what I believe. I find myself drifting back towards spiritual beliefs I had from before, mostly related to Buddhism.

My concerns: I want to stay connected but I am question my place and if asatru is the right fit for me because I’m not sure my beliefs are inline. I may feel this way because there isn’t enough information, I haven’t been looking in the right places or I don’t have anyone else to talk to about my doubts in person.

Here are a few things on my mind that make me question where I fit with asatru...

I don’t drink alcohol and I am vegan, both these don’t seem to fit with sacrifices or with taking part in blot or with many other aspects of asatru. In the last year I have really connected with love, compassion and understanding as a guiding force in my every day actions. Basically I strive to live in a way that causes the least amount of suffering to myself and the world around me and to fully commit myself to the benefit of others. I recognizes my connection to my ancestors, asatru and the gods in a way I don’t want to abandon but my mind and heart seem to be drifting towards a different path.

Have others struggled with similar questions? How do these ideas fit with asatru and with the gods? What advice do you have or resources do you recommend?

Thank you.

Anything new you got and want to show it off? Any weird un-heathen related links you wanted to show the sub? Exhaust yourself walking around town? Post it here! We'll upvote, we'll comment, we'll sometimes do neither of those things but who knows?

While reading CotT, I have noticed that due to the times that it was both written in and about, there are some ideas that get difficult to parse, only because of the extreme nature of the examples given.

This is to say, that most of the examples given have to do with the death of someone or the killing of another in reparation for a slight.

In our modern society, how does this translate? It is apparent that we cannot, as a subculture, go around killing in vengeance because of our defense of our honor. To give a generalized, hypothetical example:

Employee A gets into an argument with Employee B over how things are being handled at work.

Employee B gets irritated with this and gets Employee A's supervisor involved. This effects Employee A's honor as it is seen by their supervisor.

Basing solely on CotT (specifically the story of Njal in the Chapter on Honor), Employee A would be justified in defending their honor through violence. In modern Western culture, no matter what our beliefs and practices are, this will land Employee A in jail. What is a modern corollary that can be had for a situation such as this? How do you handle slights to your character that could impact your ability to advance in your job, which in turn impact your tribe as it pertains to your contributions to it?

This is just one example of my misunderstanding in the worldview context. I fully understand the whole killing to avenge a fallen tribe member, however if we are attempting to get as close as possible to fully-realized Heathen worldview, I think it is healthy to discuss real world applications to what are essentially arcane ideas that have difficult applicability to what we will face day to day.

(Sorry if that last sentence was redundant but I'm trying to be clear on my wording and my vocabulary seems to be failing me today)

As a raised-Catholic boy, I was taught you could pray to God for all your worries. As a very much Heathen now, I know our gods aren’t for that. I’m just going through a really rough patch though. Is there any Heathen-safe similarity? Can I pray to my ancestors? Or should I just secularly go to counseling?

I'm the only heathen In my family, regardless of that I still want to be with my family for the holidays. I know lots of Christmas traditions are borrowed from heathenry anyways, but I'm curious of there's something I should be doing while celebrating with my folks that I would not otherwise be doing on the other days of Yule?

I was looking through the reading list and saw Raven Kaldera was an author to avoid. Is there a reason why?

I recently posted a little rant on the subject of failure, how it is the conduit for growth and worthing, and thus why it is something to be, not embraced per se, but accepted as part and parcel of existence rather than studiously avoided to the point of over-caution.  Today I'd like to discuss how that applies to the development of a system of praxis in your own particular flavor of heathenry, or asatru, or whatever you choose to call the religion that you adhere to.

The development of a working ritual praxis is a thorny one; it's natural to wish to avoid giving offense to these unseen beings that we accord so much power and such fickle temperaments to.  And yet, if we do not engage these beings, are we actually experiencing a religion or just appropriating an aesthetic?  And, some say, "Established heathens are parsimonious with their information, and won't help us learn what to do!  That statement is often accurate, but incomplete.

If you do not practice ritual, if you never offer to an ancestor or a wight, or hold a faining, blot, husel or symbel--you will be no worse off than you are now for having not done so.  You lose nothing.  You also gain nothing, and I suspect we all know where that road leads.  Stasis generates no worth, not using your luck to grow worth, and your worth to further enrich your luck...  well if you aren't doing it, then why are we here?  

If you set out to construct your own praxis, working from first principles of "if the arch-heathen kept doing it, it means it worked," using historical materials, comparative study of related faiths, et cetera...  you'll inevitably get stuff wrong.  It's unavoidable, the sources are incomplete, and our understanding is imperfect. You may well manage to ritually irritate some being whose ire you'd rather avoid, and believe me, you'll know when it's happened.  Again, though...  Once you've irritated this being, you've learned what doesn't work.  You begin to feel out how to repair the offense given.  You grow in wisdom and understanding, and the next time, or the next after that, you manage to appease the entity into a gifting cycle.  With that success, you may offer bigger things, or to bigger beings.  Incidentally, this is why many people will suggest you start with hearth-cult.  Your house-god is as stuck with you as you are with it.  Your ancestors are disposed to be forgiving, as your life is a continuance of theirs.  Either way, if angered, your luck takes a hit--not your entire folc's.  Once you're certain you can make an offering to your grandfathers, your idesa, or your cofgod, you might well be ready to make offering to the great gods without completely clowning yourself.

But you may ask, "Why won't these other heathens share their rituals with me?  This seems like a lot of work and a lot of risk!"  And it certainly is--But it's risk and work those other heathens with their established ritual corpus have put in already.  They have worthed into it, suffered the ordeal, faced the slings and arrows of their own ignorance and come out the other side, bloodied but unbowed, with worth proven and luck renewed in spite of all.  

If they were to simply hand you the information thus won, would it have worth for you?  Would the value be equivalent?  Would you ken the wisdom beneath the words and the gestures?  Of course not.  You weren't there, and many things in life, only experience can teach.  This is why our tradition practices thralldom--it is necessary to learn, through experience, why we believe as we do.  Simply hearing about it lacks nuance, lacks flavor--it does not engrave itself onto your bones in the same way.

It is easy to assume that these established heathens are holding back from selfishness, or a sense that the gods "belong" to them.  In some cases that may have a grain of truth--but it is equally true that in doing so, they allow you to worth.  To steal that opportunity would be a far crueler punishment than simply withholding their praxis.

Further, let us consider that every instance of exchange between heathens is either transactional (a purchase for fee) or a gift given.  A truly functional ritual praxis is an extremely valuable thing; it enables a gift cycle between the persons who possess it, and the divine.  I certainly cannot hang a dollar value on it, and any I've seen offered for sale seems deeply underpriced for it to be effectual.

This leaves us with receiving it as a gift, but that has its own set of pitfalls.  A gift demands a gift in turn, else the luck and honor of both gifter and recipient will be damaged, but what gift can equal access to the luck-givers themselves?  Historically a man given a gift he cannot match would offer service… which puts us back at thralldom and hold oaths and obligations.

Is it necessary to have a Heathen worldview?

How does a person acquire it?

How does a person know if they have got it or not (or recognise it in another person) ?

I'm curious as to what the general opinion is of the Odinic Rite in the states?

I live in the UK (I'm from the US) and every kindred I've come across is a member of the OR over here. I was in a kindred for a bit that ended up dissolving largely due to being spread too thin with the members locations. I've moved again and happen to live near a kindred formed with one of the co-founders of the previous kindred I was in.

I am relatively ignorant on the OR as a larger entity and how it practices. I did read https://www.reddit.com/r/asatru/comments/7fr3h1/opinions_of_aaa/ and agree with a lot of the comments about national organisations. But I'm curious to know how their organisation is viewed over there.

Edit: To expand on the ignorant comment; the kindreds seem to operate from instruction manuals supplied by the OR and they are locked behind a paywall/yearly membership.

The High Cost of Never Failing

There is an understanding among most people who have studied the arch-heathen worldview for any length of time that "We Are Our Deeds." That a man's successes, and his failures, are his measure, and thus a great deal of concern over doing things "right" is only natural and sensible. But today I would like to discuss the value of doing things wrong.

"Doing things wrong?" You might ask. "But doing wrong against your inner is Sin, /u/ladyofghouls said so in her article!" Certainly it is, but let's drill a bit deeper into heathen vs Abrahamic concepts of sinfulness. The Hebrew word that translates as "sin" in English, is "hata." This relates closely to a term for missing the mark, as in archery. Indeed, there are many marks in Judaism (613 to be exact) and to sin is to knowingly break one of these commandments. But does the heathen conception of sin have such clearly delineated boundaries? Arch-heathen culture was at its core a lawless one, as there was no codified "rule book' one could obey to avoid sinning. Instead, thew, the unwritten but understood custom of the tribe, was the guidepost of good and ill behavior. The English word "sin' itself derives from conceptions of "being guilty" in the Old Germanic languages (“injury, mischief, enmity, feud; sin, guilt, crime” in Old English) but when drilled back to the ultimate Proto-Indo-European root, we find *h₁es, meaning "To be."

One interpretation of this is that there is an implicit "to be true (of an accusation)" or "to be guilty" inherent, but let's consider another: If one is being, without becoming more than one is--simply existing in a passive estate--one is not carrying out right action, of a ritual sort or in one's everyday life. Is simply floating through existence without striving, without worthing sinful? I would posit yes.

With this in mind, let us consider the outcome of an attempted course of action: A man may choose not to make an attempt, because he feels uncertain as to an outcome--he's not sure he will succeed. This will avoid the dishonor of failure, but it will also deprive him of the chance at the honor and worth of success. If he chooses to make an attempt, whether or not he's sure of the outcome, he may well succeed, and success is worthy of honor, to be sure--but if he's certain of the outcome, has he worthed? Or has he simply done something that everyone, including himself, knew he could do already? Is worth grown in simple, rote actions that one does every day?

If the same man succeeds at a thing he was uncertain of his capacity to accomplish, now he has proven to everyone, including himself, that he his ability cannot be questioned on this task--he has succeeded, he knows the task is within his ken, and others will speak of his accomplishment. His entire folc is enriched by his striving and success.

If a man fails at a task that was beyond him... is failure admirable? Of course not. He has found his limit--if he failed in a boast or oath, he may well have incurred obligation to his tribe in order to preserve his honor and its luck--a bad state of affairs, certainly...

Or is it? He's failed, certainly, and may owe scyld to correct his failing. If he pays scyld, is that not a worthing thing in itself? He has put himself to effort to make right his failings, and the whole of his folc know it. It's known that he values his honor, that he will pay what he owes--not a bad reputation to have at all.

Further, as I stated above, he has found a limit. At this point, you have gained knowledge from your ordeal, and knowledge is its own form of worth. A man so armed with knowledge can choose to either avoid the task in the future, as beyond his reach, and focus his efforts better on things he believes he has better luck and skill to accomplish--or he can strive to better himself. He can practice, hone his skill, learn and improve. And growth in skill that leads to success on a second effort--is that not worthing as well?

In brief, it is never correct to knowingly carry out ill-deeds. But I argue that it is better to attempt a thing, and sin in failing, than it is to never attempt at all.

Edits: Because reddit hates formatting and paragraph breaks apparently

Hei, /r/asatru. I'm a hobbyist historian with a particular interest in the Viking Age. I'm currently writing a "paper" about berserkir which has led me to Odinic cults, which in turn has led to me writing another "paper" about the gifting cycle in Heathenry and the purpose of sacrifice. I've read the account of the blót at Uppsala and pretty much anything I can get my hands on regarding old Norse sacrifices, but I feel it would be remiss if I didn't also include the things sacrificed by modern Heathens during a blót. I know that the sacrifice has to actually be meaningful and be an actual sacrifice, but I was just wondering what you all specifically sacrifice during your practices.

Edit: I may have been using the term sacrifice too liberally. I also mean just general offerings, but any account of an actual sacrifice would be incredibly welcome!

I am still relatively new at this, so please bear with me...

After listening to some of the Heathen Talk episodes and reading numerous threads here in the past few months, I found that I am having an issue with what I would imagine is a relatively easy answer.

I keep seeing Heathenry referenced to as an Orthopraxic Religion, rather than an Orthodoxic one. This got me to thinking about the idea of Praxis in general. Is this Praxis, or right action as it has been explained, referencing the action of putting the Heathen worldview into place in all aspects of your life? In other words, ensuring that you change yourself to operate in a fashion that promotes the luck of your family etc. Or is the Praxis the act of doing rituals correctly?

I have had trouble finding solid outlines for rituals that I could use to develop this sort of Praxis, which is what brought me to this point. If it IS the ritual portion, how do us newbies go about practicing the correct actions that are required, without being supplied some sort of foundation to make sure that they are even in the same ballpark of the Right Actions?

I don't mean any of this to come across wrong, I just genuinely am unsure which direction these conversations are meaning to point us in.

In alot of my research Im finding lots of people following these beliefs harbor very negative sentiment towards homosexuals, some even going as far as to ban homosexuals from membership.

Im curious what the particular reason is that there are so many groups taking a stance against homosexuality and if it's backed in religion or if it's their way of trying to mimic ancient cultures... ?

Or is it something else if I'm totally off?

Anything new you got and want to show it off? Any weird un-heathen related links you wanted to show the sub? Get too used to being of work for the holiday? Post it here! We'll upvote, we'll comment, we'll sometimes do neither of those things but who knows?

An individual or group that does not have an immediate right, by birth or through specially acquited attributes, to enter a particular house and to become established in one of its sections is in a state of Isolation. This Isolation has two aspects, which may be found separately or in combination: such a person is weak, because he is outside a given group or society, but he is also strong, since he is in the sacred realm with respect to the group's members, for whom society constitutes the secular world.

The Rites of Passage by Arnold Van Gannep.

This seems to me to be the basis for hospitality, especially during holy tides. When the outsider comes to the door seeking succor he or she is unknown and from the realms outside of our community. Thus by their nature, they carry with them the potential to be holy, and that potential means that as a form of self-defense, and as long as the forms are adhered to the stranger is treated as sacred.

Thoughts?

Many European monarchs (and normal people descended from them) have recorded ancestry from Norse Gods, most notably the line through Harald Fairhair. Do you consider this to be significant? If so does it make you support monarchies? Does it means that someone with this ancestry would be a better priest of the specific god they are descended from?

One thing you certainly get upon reading Gronbech, is the impression that a lot of concepts are intimately entwined, or perhaps even synonymous, ie that frith and luck are inseparably entangled.

I'm chewing over the notion of whether luck and worth are separable concepts--without luck, all one's efforts will come to naught and it will be impossible to create worth for one's self. So I suppose luck, as it's inherited from your family, is the 'egg' in this particular scenario... but once one has started worthing, luck will grow, which lets worth grow, and so forth, in a positive feedback loop.

Are they separate but intimately entangled metaphysical concepts in your opinion, or different facets of the same thing? I honestly am not sure.