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The marker for my companion Tom is up at the Veterans' Cemetery in Boulder City, Nevada. Tom wore the Thorshammer in life and it means a lot that he can have that symbol on his columbarium marker. Many heathens worked for many years to get the hammer symbol approved for Veteran graves. I am grateful for their efforts.

When it came time to have a marker made for Tom the cremation package from the mortuary company included getting the veterans' cemetery approval to have a military funeral and have his remains placed at the veterans' cemetery. I just had to tell them what I wanted and they took care of it, but they did show me the form to review for accuracy, and it had an option for the Thorshammer symbol preprinted on it, along with other faith symbols. It was a number and a checkmark. It was easy, and that part was done last fall, and yet, it didn't seem completely real that the hammer would be there until I went out today (in March) and there it was. It was easy for me because the people who came before made sure the option would be available. It took them a lot of effort. Somewhere in this same cemetery there is already a gravestone with the Thorshammer on it.

This is a story about how I manifested something I truly desired. It's a model of how I manifest things, which you may or may not want to try. It's so simple it sounds like it's not even magic, but it's definitely magical.

Back in the 90s, I had bought myself a set of silverware. Yes, I know, lol, "the sort of person who buys their own silver" haha, not very classy, but I was moving into an apartment in Las Vegas and needed my own things. (I had the money to buy things and and move to Vegas to start a business because my dad had died.) So anyway-- my own things that were better than what I'd had in my college apartment, that is. Now, there was a time when it was assumed that a woman in her 20s starting her household would not need to buy major housewares because she would get them as wedding gifts. For those who still move into their first place when they get married, fine, "you do you" as the young people say these days, but that wasn't me lol. So anyway, I picked out a really beautiful pattern and I loved it and then a few years later, after I had gotten so sick with PCOS that I had had to close my bookstore and was unable to work, I ended up having to sell the silver. I got better eventually, and gradually put my life back together, and went on to have success at other things, but from time to time, I still missed my silver. Silly, I know. What with everything else, what's a few spoons? But I did miss it. For decades. Occasionally.

There are photos circulating on social media of the stage of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Caucus. One is included in this blog post. The stage is an odd and awkward looking design that could not have arisen purely from functionality, it looks like "the Odal Rune," and it appears that the speakers at CPAC will be standing on a Nazi platform.

Let's talk about Othala as distinct from "The Odal Rune." The symbol you see in the photo is "The Odal Rune" which is 100% a Nazi symbol. The upturned feet on the ends of the legs appear only on the Nazi version, Odal, not on any version of Othala, the historical rune used in historical heathen alphabets.

A curious thing, though. Modern rune magic has adopted the "symbol upside down = opposite" thing that is common to Tarot cards, aka regular or reversed, and of course the dichotomy between the regular cross and the upside down cross. From the perspective of speakers backstage, the symbol is right side up in this photo, but from the perspective of the audience it's upside down. Regular Othala in rune readings basically means real estate or psychic inheritance, but the "Odal Rune" is usually said to mean "heritage." So, whose "heritage" is being protected and encouraged in this photo? Not the audience's. If whoever designed this stage actually understands magic, the intent is to concentrate power in the hands of the speakers, away from the general public. Magically, it would take heritage energy from the audience and allow the people standing on the platform to vampirize that energy for their own use.

If the intent behind the choice of the shape was not magical, though, it's probably meant to be a dog-whistle to neonazis. Experts on neonazis are mostly being more cautious about calling this out. American Iron Front tweeted the picture and called it "probably a coincidence." I'm glad that the anti-fascist community is being careful not to stomp on heathens and pagans when they aren't sure what symbol they're looking at. But I'm an expert on heathen symbols and I know this isn't one. There is no possible way an actual Asatruar drew the footed or winged version on a design program thinking it was a nice historical heathen rune. It's unlikely the stage designer is heathen, anyway. That is not Othala, the heathen rune, it's Odal, the Nazi symbol.

You can read about more symbols in my article Heathen Vs. Hate in the latest issue of Witches & Pagans Magazine.

Photo: news photo composite copied for news editorializing purposes, consisting of a photo of the CPAC stage and two historical photos of SS insignia

Yggdrasil was a small format heathen newsletter which was, for a while, my primary contact with the heathen community. Recently I re-read a few old issues from the 90s. I was struck by the mix of academic explorations of lore with fun and games like the rune puzzles, and announcements about future events. Obviously I remember that-- I even wrote some of those rune puzzles-- but from my perspective here 30 years later and deeply enmeshed in the internet it seems strange to think about the days when I would yearn for communication with other heathens and it came in the form of the letters section in the larger magazines, which each came once a quarter. I would yearn for more knowledge and it came in the mail, on random topics chosen by the magazine editors. Looking at the contents of a few copies of Yggdrasil now, it reminds me strongly of the contents of the forum I manage, the Asatru Facebook Forum, except that people in forums can just post things and don't have to go through an editor's selection process, and everything is nearly instantaneous. Someone can post a question on a topic and a dozen people will answer in the space of a few days. Thinking back to how it was before the net, it seems almost miraculous.

The net has replaced a lot of what I used to seek at heathen festivals back in the day, too. It's replaced the seminars and panels and specialty rituals with similar things held online, especially last year as people deliberately tried to hold actual gatherings over the net due to the pandemic. Blogs like this one have replaced some of the in-person classes we used to have at festivals or in bookstores. Forums meet part of the need for social interaction with other heathens that we used to get hanging out by the campfire at festivals. And of course, the festival's dealer's tables have moved to the net too. Yet, we still have festivals-- or at least we did before Covid-- and obviously, we still have magazines. So, the net must not be meeting all of everyone's needs.

A question that can come up when students first learn that heathens in historical times had divorce and that the wife was the key holder in most times in heathen history (with some notable exceptions) is: what happened after that? If the woman was the property owner did the man lose his status after divorce?

That's a good question, and the answer is sometimes, but not usually. Social status in the ancient world depended on a lot more besides being landed or not. A man would only lose status when he left his wife's property if the man's status was tied to the estate, which was not always the case. That had to do with how much property was involved in the marriage, which was more an issue with the upper classes, and whether there were any noble titles involved, also only an issue for the upper classes, and only in some time periods.

An example would be if the property on which they lived were exclusively her inheritance and getting divorced meant he had to stop being a land holding lord and go join some other lord's house carls. But that would have been a really small percentage of people. It would not affect most people.

When we choose a thing from a set of things as part of ritual or fortune telling, such as pulling a rune or tarot card, we are practicing three different skills. The one everyone knows about consciously is that we are practicing the application of knowledge we learned about that system. For example, if we work with the Elder Futhark we might associate Ehwo with a horse. There are two other skills that reading runes teaches us. One applies to all rune readings, like knowledge-based interpretations do, and the other only applies to picking from a set.

The second skill is psychometry. When we either cast runes or pull a rune we get psychic impressions off of the runes by touching them. This skill may generalize to other systems. For example, a practiced rune reader may get impressions off of tarot cards too, even without knowing anything about the tarot system. A practiced rune reader may even get impressions from objects that are not fortune telling lots, or from places. For example, decades ago when I visited England I got psychic impressions from the henge at Avebury and from an old church, which I wrote about in some of my earliest posts on this blog. My trained ability to get impressions from my rune stones generalized to getting impressions from a standing stone circle and other buildings.

One man who is a terrorist does not make a whole religion terrorists. I would have thought our society had learned that lesson by now.

Rolling Stone Magazine called the entire set of Heathen religions "code for white supremacy-aligned pagans" and we must resist this as strongly as we resist the fascists themselves, for two reasons:

Firstly, because to cede the words and symbols of our religion to white supremacists and neo-Nazis makes them stronger no matter who is trying to appropriate our words and symbols on their behalf. Battling for our words and symbols against white power gangs and neonazis has been the main reason for the Heathen Visibility Project from the beginning. See the history of the Project recently published under Heathen Visibility Project Year in Review 2020, on the link below:

Summary of Heathen Visibility Project so far: http://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-paths-blogs/gnosis-diary/heathen-visibility-project-year-in-review-2020.html

Secondly, because directing the hate and fear of the large and powerful society in which we live against our tiny religion hurts us in many ways. Already I've seen posts on social media from heathens, and other pagans who normally wear the same symbols as heathens, saying they are afraid to wear their symbols in public. We must make a world where it is safe for all people to wear their religious symbols and cultural attire.

What do I mean by heathen? Heathen is a broad term for a group of related religions, just like Christian. Individual sects of heathenry include Asatru, Forn Sed, Theod, Urglaawe, Forn Sidr, etc., just like individual sects of Christianity include Baptist, Catholic, Orthodox, etc. And just like Christian sects that have individual churches that might have a name like Unity Center or 1st Church of God, heathen sects have individual kindreds and hearths that might have a name like Mountain Kindred or Asatru Temple. Heathen is a subset of Pagan; the word Pagan doesn't refer to a specific pantheon of gods, but Heathen does. All the heathen religions share a core group of gods, stories, and cultural norms, even the ones in which the set of gods and myths only has a narrow overlap. Those gods generally include the gods for whom the days of the week are named, by various linguistic variations, for example, Thursday named for Thunor who is also Thor who is also Dunner. We use the term Heathen because it was used historically to refer to the traditional religion of the peoples of northern Europe; like Pagan, it was created by Christians, but we reclaimed it. Heathendom predates the modern social construct of race, but to the extent that historical heathens had any such concept within the ideas of tribe, nation, and species, the gods were very clearly descended of multiple tribes and thus are today a model of a multiracial society, as detailed in my essay Asgard as Multiracial Society, available on the link below

Asgard as a Multiracial Society: https://eternalhauntedsummer.com/issues/summer-solstice-2014/asgard-as-a-multi-racial-society/

Heathen leaders and heathen anti-racism groups have already roundly condemned the one man who was wearing our symbols when he participated in the Capitol Hill insurrection. That man is the man who calls himself Q-Shaman, who may not even be heathen. Here are some of the most prominent statements condemning him, starting with mine, which also explains what his tattoos mean:

My blog post Dishonor Upon the Man in the Horned Hat: http://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-paths-blogs/gnosis-diary/dishonor-upon-the-man-in-the-horned-hat.html

Official statement of The Troth: https://www.thetroth.org/news/20210106-192450
Official statement of Heathens Against Hate: https://www.heathensagainst.org/post/capitol-hill-statement
Official statement of Huginn's Heathen Hof: http://www.heathenhof.com/hhh-statement-attempted-coup-d-c/

After all those public statements were already made and were freely available on the net, Rolling Stone went forward with their article calling Heathen religions "white supremacy-aligned." This also occurred while my article Heathen Vs. Hate in the latest issue of Witches and Pagans Magazine was still on newsstands across the country, easily available to read if the reporter had bothered.

Responses to the Rolling Stone article came swiftly. I first heard about it on Twitter. Most of the responses have been by individuals on social media, which I'm not going to link here, but here is a public statement in response by an organization:

The Heathen Underground: https://www.facebook.com/heathenunderground/posts/3933159010030485

Heathen groups of various kinds have been fighting white supremacists and neonazis for a long time. Perhaps the broadest coalition of various heathen organizations, individuals, businesses, and local groups battling white supremacy are the signatories to Declaration 127. Declaration 127 references a verse in the Havamal, part of our sacred literature, which goes "Where you see evil, speak out against it." You can read the full Declaration and list of signatories on the link below. I'm one of the signatories as American Celebration Kindred, the small local religious community of which I am the priestess.

Declaration 127: http://declaration127.com/  

Another prominent heathen anti-racism group is Heathens United Against Racism (HUAR) which you can find on this link, although they do not appear to have made an official statement on this topic: https://www.facebook.com/HeathensUnited/

There is an ongoing annual international conference on heathen anti-racism called Frith Forge. Heathens interested in participating can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/frithforge/

The Heathen Visibility Project, now more than ever, must continue our mission. Part of that mission is to out-compete instances of our symbols being used as hate symbols that show up on search engines, in order to take our symbols back and preserve them for religious use. Every good, non-fascist heathen wearing our symbols in public spaces, especially on the net where the whole world can see, makes it safer for other heathens to wear and use them too. We must be loud and visible to counter the damage done by the heavy coverage by social media and professional media of Q-Shaman and his heathen symbol tattoos. We must continue to deny racists the cover of our religion by kicking them out of our spaces and talking over them until their message is drowned out by ours.

The other part of the Project's mission is to provide useful images of heathens doing heathenry that media could use to talk about heathens in stories unrelated racism or riot. We must continue to create non-racist and nonfiction heathen images that could be used by professional media and others to illustrate articles about heathenry, so that when we have a chance at positive coverage there is something there for reporters to see and use other than the racists or fictional characters.

Heathens who want to participate in the Project, and media who are looking for non-racist, nonfiction heathen images: the Project's hashtag is #heathenvisibility.

Media looking for news photos and stock images of non-racist nonfiction heathen images: Heathen Visibility Project folders on:
Shutterstock: https://www.shutterstock.com/search/heathenvisibility
Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/erinlale/gallery/64184335/heathenvisibility

My fellow heathens: Keep on doing the work. We can do this.