Call yourself a heathen?

When you choose to eschew the normal rituals and paraphenalia of the heathen path, it is liberating on one hand, but can be demoralising on the other. When you don't blot every day, talk to the gods, make offerings, etc it can make times like these - where we are limited in what we can do (i.e. lockdown) difficult. After all, what parts of my daily life at the moment are actually heathen?

I wear a mjolnir pendant. I have a tshirt with odin on it in my wardrobe. I have norse gods as usernames for some of my favourite websites.

Doesn't really seem enough, somehow.

Then again, if I were blotting every day and making offerings to the wights in my local area on heathen feast days, why would those things make me more heathen?

Maybe it is enough to be heathen in your heart and mind - where it counts?

Celebrations

So, my family and the in laws all went out to a new Indian restaurant that has opened local to us. The Mangrove in Westhoughton has no alcohol license, but you can take your own liquor, which helps reduce the cost of the night. My birthday is tomorrow (16th), which was the stated purpose of our night out. Really, though, we've been wanting to try it for some time.

Really nice food, friendly waiters and nice decor all helped us toward a really enjoyable evening. It is at times like these that I feel more heathen. Despite my wider family not being heathen. Despite no mention of gods, wights, norns or the like. Just celebrating family stuff together in a simple way like this feels closer to the original arch-heathens and their way of life than any forced shoehorning of my thought patterns into an older, archaic mindset and worldview just for the sake of it.

You can work 'hail', 'skol' and other norse buzzwords into your daily conversation as much as you like, but all that does is confirm you as a live roleplayer. Heathen values and practices are what matter more.

So, I hit 43 tomorrow, and I am celebrating with a day off work and thinking about my future. How I can make improve it for myself and my family. How I can make my career more rewarding for me and more secure and valuable for my family.

Distractions

It is so very easy to get distracted from posting here as often as I'd like.  I really want to regale you all with lurid descriptions of everything that makes me love heathenry - with and without the viking side of it.

But all the good will in the world can't keep me supplied with interesting articles to post or cool words to send you all.

That said, I will endeavour to make a better job of it going forward.