Gnosis Diary: Life as a Heathen

My personal experiences, including religious and spiritual experiences, community interaction, general heathenry, and modern life on my heathen path, which is Asatru.

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Erin Lale

Erin Lale

Erin Lale is the author of Asatru For Beginners, and the updated, longer version of her book, Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path. Erin has been a gythia since 1989. She was the editor and publisher of Berserkrgangr Magazine, and is admin/ owner of the Asatru Facebook Forum. She also writes science fiction and poetry, ran for public office, is a dyer and fiber artist, was acquisitions editor at a small press, and founded the Heathen Visibility Project.
Panel on Paganism at American Academy of Religion

This weekend I was a panelist at the American Academy of Religion conference at UNLV on “History of Mystery: Pagans in Las Vegas,” organized by Prof. Candace Kant. The panel included representatives from various pagan traditions. I represented Asatru.

My fellow panelists included BJ Rogers of the ADF (Druid) Larrea Tridentata Grove, Edmond Costello of Sanctuary of Solace (an all-inclusive Goddess community,) Abbi McBride of Vegas Vortex, and Rev. Areeya Marie Sharpe of Desert Moon Circle and Temple of Goddess Spirituality (Sekhmet Temple.) Marissa d’Aradia of Sin City Witches was slated to be on the panel but couldn’t make it. I had met most of the other panelists before, either at Pagan Pride Day events or at Sin City Witches events.

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Save the Butterflies

Butterflies mean different things in different traditions, but in modern heathen practice they are sacred to Sigyn. There is significant established group gnosis on this (see my paper in a previous issue of Witches & Pagans Magazine.) Today I want to talk about some recent personal gnosis, and also about saving the butterflies. 

It's my custom to serve afternoon tea, which usually means the ladies who live here have a visit and talk about normal house things. I also usually have my first sip for the goddesses of Asatru. If it's quiet, especially if there's a minute before everyone else shows up after I announce tea time, I often ask the goddesses if they have any messages or directions or advice for me, or how I'm doing (meaning how I'm doing with their work and things they care about.) Most of the time they don't have anything they want to say, but recently Sigyn asked me to remind my readers that what she wants above all is not symbols or sacrifices to her but actual physical butterflies living in the world.

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I'll be participating in a round table discussion at the American Academy of Religion conference at UNLV in March. The title is History of Mystery: Pagans in Las Vegas. I plan to blog about the experience here, so stay tuned.

Next up on this post is my brief report about another author's article, with a link. After that I relate some of my recent personal gnosis.

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Some Slavic pagan reconstructionist groups have a special day for the Dark God on Leap Year Day. This day may be for Koschei, Chernobog, or the Dark Face of Veles.

Leap years are years that have an extra day, and they happen every 4 years, in our current calendar system. The extra day is February 29th, and some cultures have holidays for Leap Year's Day. One of those is the reconstructed pagan religion, Ukrainian Ridnoveri, and other Slavic pagan groups. But they use the Slavic calendar, which is the same as the Orthodox calendar in use in Slavic countries, based on the old Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar in use in Western countries. Slavic February 29th is not the on same day as our February 29th in the English speaking world. 

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Heathen Visibility Project 2023 in Review

The Heathen Visibility Project was gearing back up in the early part of the year, continuing last year's trend. We were making more photos of people again, after pausing while groups and gatherings were sidelined by the pandemic lockdowns. However, a monkeywrench was thrown in the works by the sudden appearance of so-called "AI" art, and art websites' widespread embrace of it. What is being called generative AI is not true artificial intelligence, but since that's the term that's most commonly used, I'll be calling it "AI" as well (while hoping any true AI out there knows I'm not talking about it.) It's really just ML, machine learning.

Creators have to decide if it is worth continuing to create and share their work when the net is flooded with computer generated swill. The garbage churned out by "AI" / ML programs fills up searches, social media feeds, host sites, and sales sites, while human-made works become harder to find. Worse, the "AI" art and writing are based on the human-made work, mostly without the creators' consent. Some "AI" art prompts generate art with recognizable models and celebrity faces and sometimes even the watermarks of the artists whose works were stolen to train the "AI" systems. It's discouraging.

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In a shocking display of vitriol for the pages of an old and otherwise respectable mainstream magazine, The Atlantic ran an opinion piece titled The Return of the Pagans which makes numerous outrageous claims about both ancient paganism and the modern manifestations of paganism. The op-ed's author, David Wolpe, contrasts paganism with monotheism and repeatedly expresses his opinion that monotheism is better in every way. 

Every paragraph is a new wtf. Starting off by claiming that Trump is pagan because of his crass displays of wealth, the article only gets more disturbed from there. The entire article is a series of untrue and offensive statements about paganism.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page,
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate arti
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. S
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it b

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In the recent Loki series on TV, Marvel-Loki says "I can rewrite the story." He's talking about controlling time, alternate timelines and universes, and time travel. Comics fans are now calling him God of Stories, a title he had in the comics. 

Asa-Loki never held that title, but was certainly a driver of stories, being central to the plot of many myths. He makes change happen.

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