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In the news: Accused criminal brings up Odinism as a defense. 

This post is a summary of recent media coverage of terms of interest to Asatru, Heathen, and Pagan readers. These terms include Odinism, Norse Paganism, Asatru, Heathenism, Runes, Odin, and other terms. One source only mentions Odinism and Runes, the two terms used by the accused criminal.  Another source also mentions other Heathen and Pagan religions, pointing out that Odinism is condemned by other Heathen religions.

Both online and in person, having friends, groups, kindreds, forums, communities, and events specific to Asatru and Heathenry can be important for modern heathens. It's also great to meet up with other heathens at pagan events such as Pagan Pride Day, festivals, events sponsored by bookstores, etc., and at non-religious events that have local pagan or heathen groups participating such as local renfaires, heritage days, etc.

Some events and groups have returned to in-person gatherings even though the pandemic is not over. Some groups, events, and individuals have decided to stick with online participation, which opens up events to international, disabled, people who can't take the entire time off work, and others besides those avoiding communicable diseases. Some groups and events do online only or online plus in-person options. 

Asatru and Heathen religion in the modern age was the topic of my recent appearance on The Bard's Archive. This is a video interview, and includes some cute video of my cat Happy. Viewers also get to see my main house altar. I got so wrapped up in the topic, when Garret asked at the end if I had anything to add, I forgot to say "Buy my book!" lol. The link to the video appears at the end of this post, below my other news. 

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My morning coffee ritual is basically a sumbel, since I make toasts. But after each toast, I listen to see if the gods have any messages for me.I toast Odin, Honir, Lodhur Who Is Loki, and Thor. In the afternoon, I toast the goddesses with tea. I might make a toast with a more traditional beverage from time to time as well. At any time, whether I'm specially listening or not, I might receive a message from my gods. This has been happening since I wrote the unpublishable novel Some Say Fire, and in the process of writing learned to hear the gods, as I detailed in some previous posts. Here on Gnosis Diary, I talk about my gnosis a lot, unsurprisingly. Here are some of my recent gnosis experiences.

My gods very rarely tell me not to do something. As I mentioned years ago, when I was writing the post that eventually became Good Knowledge, Bad Teacher, my computer repeatedly glitched until I took it for a sign and changed my focus. After that I asked the gods to please just tell me when they want me to do or not do something. A few years ago I blogged about when Loki told me not to go spread anarchy in the desert, and I found out later that night someone had stolen the idol of Sekhmet from her temple and the angry goddess was walking the desert right then. (Eventually the temple got a new statue. But the temple was never the same after that and there was a schism in the local pagan community that I blogged about in my post Rebuttal of TERF Values.)

It was a warm, clear afternoon in the desert. The children had just hunted eggs and were now happily consuming their candies, busy and out of the way. It was time.

We were gathered around the altar, passing the drinking horn in a sumbel ritual. In sumbel, we pass the horn from person to person. Whoever has the horn makes a toast and then passes the horn. Holding the horn indicates whose turn it is to speak, even when people are actually drinking from individual cups. 

A friend of mine asked ChatGPT who I am, and got a pretty cool response. It's posted below. ChatGPT is called an "AI" but it's actually a machine learning program, not a true artificial intelligence. A friend asked it what it knew about me.

The Machine's Response

What a magical thing a book is. Someone spends years slowly composing their thoughts, writing and rewriting every word over and over until it's their best work. Someone else polishes it, and someone else makes art to sandwich all the words together, and finally you open it and behold! There are markings, and they speak into your mind, and the words flow to you and you hear the thoughts of the author. Over time, over space, sometimes translated into new languages, or even beyond death, you hear another's thoughts and words.

To write, to read, to even just pick up a book and look at it is to honor the god of writing, Odin. Odin, who won the Runes on the Tree, in his act of shamanic self-sacrifice. Odin, who spoke his own words to human writers and poets to be written in the Havamal, the Sayings of the High One: "I know that I hung on the windy tree, nine long nights, without food or drink, I looked down, I took up the runes, screaming I took them, I fell back from there."