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?

Origin of the gods?

Something of a placemarker here. Just some ideas for further consideration when I have more time. I'm at work right now and can't really spend too much time daydreaming about our heathen ancestors and norse mythology.

I've just been considering the Voluspa, more specifically, the following passage:

6. Then sought the gods | their assembly-seats,
The holy ones, | and council held;
Names then gave they | to noon and twilight,
Morning they named, | and the waning moon,
Night and evening, | the years to number.

7. At Ithavoll met | the mighty gods,
Shrines and temples | they timbered high;
Forges they set, and | they smithied ore,
Tongs they wrought, | and tools they fashioned.


To me, this sounds like the establishment of civilisation. Establishing rules, constructing municipal buildings, creating tools - all things necessary when establishing a new culture or city-state. Could the gods have originally been ancestors who established the original proto-germanic culture?