Note: This started off as a cathartic little rant about people making up bullshit stories to try to score points in heathen groups online. It started to get quite verbose, however and by the end it was looking too long to post in a single draft. So, I'm going to split it into three parts and post each part over the next few days.
I appreciate some of this is quite derogatory and not hugely respectful to new heathens. I would encourage people to bear with it, though as nestled in all that wordage are some few little pieces of advise that I would have benefitted from greatly, back when I was a new heathen at the start of this millennium.
Contemporary heathenry is populated by a wide range of people with an equally wide range of world views and spiritual experiences. From atheists to polytheists and skeptics to believers. Surprisingly, and testament to the good will present in the subculture as a whole, this has yet to cause much in the way of strife - as far as I am aware. A fondly held tenet of online interactions being a robust tolerance for the views of others (excepting bigotry, obviously).
In general, though, online discussions stick to the material plane. The lore, history, archaeology and white supremacist groups being hot topics in most of the heathen communities of which I have been a part. In discussions, divine/spiritual experience and UPG is rarely mentioned. UPG is Unverified Personal Gnosis. Essentially personal experiences that inform our own paths, but shouldn't really mean anything to others. Remember that time you thought you saw the Wild Hunt in the sky as you were leaving your work's Xmas do? That's UPG. May or may not be real, but felt real/important enough on a personal level to inform your path.
My personal opinion is that UPG should be left out of online discussions, unless the topic specifically calls for it. If one person believes from the very cockles of their heart that they're Thor's human lover, that has no bearing on anyone else's path whatsoever. The person claiming that may be mentally ill, may have been tricked, might have been under the influence of drugs, or might just be plain lying. All of those are more reasonable explanations than a god with no record of having ever taken a human lover, has gone against all reason and his own character to play hide the sausage with some random whose only been heathen since the start of the second season of "Vikings".
I am not denying that spiritual experiences and/or divine contact can and do occur. I have had an experience that, at the time, felt spiritual myself. What I am saying is, that such things are personal and not really appropriate fodder for discussion in an online, public(-ish) heathen forum. It kind of equates to being introduced to your mate's friend for the first time in a pub and opening with "My uncle Trevor showed me his winkie when I was eight years old...". It's too personal, not at all appropriate and, frankly, how is the other guy supposed to react? What possible conversation or social activity will blossom from that? Spiritual experiences are the kinds of of things that should, to my mind, be reserved for relating only very rarely and in hushed, reverential tones over ale/across a campfire to very close and cherished friends. Not used in some lame attempt to score "Viking points"[TM] with lots of strangers over the internet.
Now, spiritual experiences are kind of subjective, nebulous and hard to adequately describe by their very nature. Looking back upon them, we can be forgiven for perhaps embellishing the event a little to suit our desire to make it an example of "heathen divine contact". First of all, though, it is not necessary to have some kind of special event or blessing from a god to be a bona fide heathen. Self identifying as heathen and working toward understanding the faith and carving your own path is more than enough. Secondly, even accepting that gods do exist as entities in their own right and that they do, on occasion, take on physical form, there are certain things we need to get out of the way. First of all, there are heathens in the world today who have been on their heathen path for over four decades. They have dedicated their lives to one or more of the gods and goddesses, written books about them, held public blots and symbels and been an example of how a disciple of their chosen god should speak and act over years in many public fora and in real life. With this in mind, please ask yourself why this particular god would appear to you when you have only been self-identifying as heathen for a couple of years? The gods don't care that you once dropped a 250UKP order at GrimFrost. If anything, they are gonna judge you by your actions. What have you done recently to show how heathen you are?
To be continued...
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