Gods, wights and ancestors - Or is that the wrong way around?

One of the side effects of heathens bringing their christian sensibilities into heathenry is the over-emphasis on the Aesir and Vanir. The Gods and Goddesses star in our mythology, cosmology and campfire stories. They inspire us and teach us important lessons about the nine worlds and the importance of being a good heathen. Being active in all the nine worlds and having great stories and quests to complete means that they have little time to spend dealing with the whims and fancies of the average everyday heathen.

Perhaps one of the things that was new and appealing about christianity at the time of the conversion was the idea of a god who took interest in each worshipper's life. One who watched over them and cared for them - offering protection and blessings to that individual worshipper, rather than to the collective community as a whole.

For heathens, gods weren't required to offer personal service to each individual. Our ancestors, being part of our own family line and having loved us in life would have been the ones who took care of personal fortune, luck and prosperity. After all, it is in the ancestors' own interests for you to succeed and gain fame and fortune. For they live on in you and they are in turn remembered by you. As the Havamal says, "...one thing never will die, the fame of one who has done well". They are your protection and the source of your wyrd. To understand them is to understand yourself. To recount their stories is a foundational part of your fame and carving your own story that your descendents in turn will remember for you.

Similarly, wights or vaettir are closer to the individual heathen than the Aesir and Vanir. This is because, while they are not part of your family and do not have any vested interest in you in that sense, they do share your little corner of Midgard with you. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement to have good dealings with the vaettir of your home and surrounding area. They are like your neighbours. Getting on well with your neighbours can significantly improve your quality of life. Just as being embroiled in a dispute with your neighbours can cause considerable detriment. Therefore, it is wise to make offerings to the wights/vaettir of your local area and home.

Other members of my family share my ancestors and so we could (were any of them heathen) blot together in their honour. My friends live in my neighbourhood and so we share some vaettir between us, and those of us who are heathen blot to them. However, when dealing with heathens who aren't family or local to me, my ancestors and local vaettir mean nothing to them. This is where gods and goddesses help bring us together. I can meet my fellow heathens from the south of England and offer a toast to Thor, knowing they will join me. If I offer a toast to my grandfather Harry, what would that really mean to them? Equally, if I offer a toast to the vaettir from Rivington Pike, how will they understand what that means? Gods and goddesses are more likely to take an interest in heathenry as a whole, or larger communities of heathens. So, when I mix with my fellow heathens at Sumarrblot 2021, it will be to them that I drink.

For a better, more educated and erudite explanation of this, I heartily recommend checking out Arith Harger's video on Tribal Heathenry.

Vikinging for vikings who want to show how vikingey they are

This is another post inspired by threads and conversations on various heathen and pagan fora that I've frequented through the years.

Seeing as most heathens - at least those of my age - were born and raised in an ostensibly christian nation to parents of varying degrees of christian piety, we have all been required to build our heathen lifestyles from scratch, so to speak.

For better or worse, the viking age ended and heathen society gave way completely to christianity. What I mean by that is that there was a long period of history during which heathenry no longer existed. For the UK, that is pretty much from about 1000AD until, at the very earliest, the revival in interest of all things Teutonic and mythological in the nineteenth century.

All contemporary heathens are working paths that either they created for themselves probably sometime in the last 50 years or so, or they have been given their path by someone who did so. Some of these paths have been based purely on the historical and archaeological record, some have been influenced by personal gnosis (UPG) and I imagine some have even been influenced (consciously or unconsciously) by fiction (films, literature and, perhaps others).

A part of that establishment of a heathen path is deciding what values, beliefs and activities are intrinsically heathen or what such things are required to make the practitioner heathen, rather than simply spiritual, pagan or, indeed, any other denomination.

One of the traps that we, as heathens, can fall foul of during this process is falsely attributing values, beliefs or activities as "heathen" purely because they were prevalent around the time period known as "the Viking age". One example of this is people who use Old Norse or Anglo Saxon as a liturgical language. There is no evidence that the original heathens used any special language or turn of phrase when referring to or dealing with their deities, ancestors, wights or any other aspect of their heathenry. They used the same everyday language that today for us, would be English. A better modern interpretation might be to use poetry as a form of heathen spiritual language - as we know that the composition of poetry was highly regarded in the age of our heathen forefathers.

Some might argue that speaking Anglo Saxon or Old Norse might help those involved get into the right frame of mind for dealing with their heathen faith. Much in the way that many people take to dressing up in period garb. I think with both these cases, though, that the danger is that the ancient/dead language and/or the anachronistic clothing draws the focus away from more important matters. It also delineates the time in ritual or when speaking of heathen concepts as being separate to the comparative mundanity of daily life. This is something which wouldn't have been obvious originally. The gods, ancestors, wights and worldview were all a part and parcel of daily life.

I think it is important for me and my heathen path, that rather than trying to mindlessly replicate the actions of my heathen forebearers, I instead need to understand their values and worldview. This will allow me to understand the reasons why they did what they did. Why they saw the world the way they did. Why they valued certain traits and disapproved of others. Then I can take this knowledge and attempt to construct my own, contemporary version of heathenry for application within the modern world.

I hope that the following posts in this blog will help clarify my train of thought as I try to evaluate which aspects of heathenry can be successfully and meaningfully adapted to the modern world.

Heathen englightenment: What would it be like?

Last week, I travelled back to my native county, Lincolnshire, to visit my parents. While we were there, we watched quite a lot of tv. While far from helpless, my parents are now well into their 80s and don't leave the house too much. One of the things we watched on tv was the Eddie Murphy movie, "Holy Man".

While the film has been soundly trashed by critics, the public and even Mr Murphy himself, I have quite a soft spot for it. In essence, Eddie Murphy plays 'G', an eastern-style 'Holy Man' who meets up with a couple of ad executives and agrees (for vaguely plaussible reasons) to star on their shopping channel. In doing so, he preaches his anti-materialist spiritual message across the network and helps the ad execs change their ways in the process. All in all, an enjoyable movie, with a nice message.

Anyhow, after the film concluded, I got to thinking. What would a heathen version of this kind of 'holy man' look like, and what message would he be promoting? How would his refreshingly different worldview help similarly jaded members of modern society?

I think, perhaps, the message would be multi-faceted. Personal responsibility would be a big part of it. Taking responsbility for one's own actions and the predicament we each find ourselves in. Less blaming of others for our own problems. Less of the 'where there's a blame there's a claim' compensation culture.

Facing up to our own problems and doing something about anything we don't like or disagree with. Direct, simple, honest action to solve problems or improve our own situation. When seeing someone doing something we disagree with, taking them to task about it, rather than simply watching it happen and then impotently recounting it to a third party later on.

Being honest and truthful, even to a fault if necessary. Nothing wrong with being blunt. Most important of all, of course, a heathen should keep his word. Not just vows and oaths, but if a heathen says he will attend a gathering, then he should damn well attend.

I also feel, despite my personal view that the Havamal is overused as a reference for heathen values, that a very decent set of values could be distilled from the wisdom within those verses. I am not sure I believe that they are literally 'The Sayings of the High One', but they are almost certainly contemporaneous with the Viking Age and would have been known by the Teutonic peoples in those times.

These, I feel, would be the attributes most valuable in a modern context.

UKPagan blog entry March 2013:

I've had multiple ideas for posts to this here blog of late:

1. Pastoral paganism.
How many pagans seem to think of nature as that 'Beatrix-Potter-esque' idea of mother nature as a kind, nurturing, loving soul. Probably due to the very sanitised 'countryside' that occupies most of the green spaces in this country. This conveniently ignores that mother nature also is responsible for death, decay and one animal often has to die so another can live. Horrible diseases are just as valid and important a part of the natural cycle as are fluffy mice and kittens and tweety birds.

2. Urban paganism
Again, mostly prompted by the very safe countryside, which mostly comprises of farm, parkland and country estates, I was going to wax philosophical about how pagans 'back in the day' probably had an awareness of their world more akin to that of a contemporary city dweller than someone who lives in today's UK countryside. A kind of 'street sense' would probably have been required to keep those pagans out of danger, not dissimilar to that of someone living in the city who might avoid certain areas or going out at certain times, due to a higher likelihood of something bad happening (think match days or political marches).

3. More 'where's my (pagan) head at?' posts
Well, the title says it all, really. I often have stuff that I need to get out of my head and find that, through the prism of my keyboard, I can sometimes make better sense of my opinions on things.

As it is, though, I've had little time to devote to such posts and so I offer this update as a 'bookmark' if you like, to remind me to post more stuff here going forward.

Whether it'll prompt me to post more or not, though, is anyone's guess...




Shame I never really posted any threads on the UKPagan message board about these. At least that leaves me with more fodder for this site, though.

In the interests of getting hits to this site, though, I will probably intersperse those posts with plenty of stuff about Vikings! ;)