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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in heathen community

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Community Experiences Fall 2023

From kindred holidays to the return of my local Pagan Pride Day, I've had a lot of community experiences this autumn. It's been awesome and of course I am sharing my fun with my blog readers. 

American Celebration Kindred usually does our fall ritual as Rainbow Season, for two reasons. Firstly in honor of Heimdall, Tom's patron. Secondly, because we live in the Mojave Desert, where summer is the rainy season. After the rain comes the rainbow, so after the rainy season comes the rainbow season. This year we held Zisa Day in September and I did a Rainbow Season ritual at Pagan Pride Day in November. We'll probably return to doing our Rainbow Season ritual in September in other years, but we also try to do a least one or more new rituals each year. Last year my kindred's other gythia Amanda led Haustlong, a traditional autumn ritual, in September. This year we held Zisa Day. 

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Asatru and Heathen Friends and Communities

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. 

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Recently there was a discussion in the Asatru Facebook Forum that evolved a subthread about Godan, the name of Odin among the Lombards. I received some gnosis, and so, since this blog is Gnosis Diary, I'm going to tell you all about it.

As background to the Godan discussion: The main thread had been affirming the original poster's exploration of Asatru as a possible path, which grew into discussion of Unitarian-Universalist style religion, which eventually branched into the Godan discussion. It was pointed out that the name Godan was the origin of the English name God for the Christian God. This led to a question of whether they were the same god.

At this point Odin spoke in my head. (Which is not unusual for me at all, as you see if you read the past few years' blog posts, and we had just been communicating during my daily morning coffee ritual a few minutes before, so this was not a remarkable occurrence except that he had a message he wanted conveyed.) "I am not the same god."

Since the original post was a new seeker's intro post, when Odin joined the conversation in my head I wanted to be sure to express it in a way that would not be received as argumentative or unwelcoming. I remember very well how people reacted to my first few reports of messages from the gods, like "Don't poison the Earth," which I had to completely recast as "Love nature and care for her" before people found the message acceptable, when I first started receiving this type of gnosis a few years ago when I was opened to the gods by writing fiction. So with that in mind, I crafted my comment.

Additional background: the comment to which I was responding also mentioned the "chosen people" thing, which I why I included a reference to it in my answer. One of the differences between Odin and YHVH is that Odin doesn't have a chosen people. Some of the heathen gods were patrons or ancestors of species tribes or nations in historical times-- the Lore specifically says the Langobards were named by Frigga who favored them in a war, for example-- but they never said other people couldn't worship them. So the comment to which I was responding started off by commenting about the name Godan being borrowed for the name of xian God, and also included a reference to YHVH having a chosen people.

So here is the comment I created to convey my gnosis in a way that other Asatruers would find unobjectionable:

True. So if people want to reclaim the name God / Godan for Odin that's fine. The being most people mean by the name God is someone else entirely, who may or may not be still the same god whose name was taboo; since that god did have a chosen people and most modern day xians are not from that people it begs the question who that guy really is anymore, but that's beyond the scope of a study of heathenry so I have no answers there. One thing I do know, well two things, firstly that all outlooks from atheist to unitarian-universalist to soft polytheist to hard polytheist are part of modern Asatru and are welcome here, and secondly that Odin is not YHVH because he told me so. That's another thing that is welcome here: gnosis. Because the gods are here now.

(comment finished with smiley face emojis.)

So, here is my opinion about what it's like to have gnosis like this: it's easy to communicate with the gods. What's hard is figuring out how to talk about communicating with the gods in a way that other people won't knee-jerk want to argue with. I think there are probably lots of people who have gnosis like this and just don't talk about it because it's so hard to talk about. That's one of the things I want to help with by writing this blog and also by running the forum: to normalize talking about gnosis so it will be easier in the future.

I know I succeeded in crafting my response correctly because my comment led to a nice discussion of the other person's gnosis and opinions. Which led to the related but distinct discussion of how different is Odin from Godan from Wodan, and how different is one person's Odin from another person's Odin. I think Odin, Godan, and Wodan are simultaneously different and the same. And for the second question, I like the metaphor of the godphone, where everyone has a distinct phone number and might get the wrong voicemails if they dial in from someone else's. When I receive gnosis I always know if it's just for me or intended to be conveyed to other people. The very few messages I receive to convey are such a small percentage of the conversations I have in my mind with my gods that they stand out like a red tree among yellow and green trees. Like looking a hillside full of trees in autumn and there is only one maple tree in the whole forest. Usually the only time I can just directly relay a message without trying to craft a way to say it nicely is when I'm giving a rune reading, in which case people already expect and want a message. This is a skill it took me years to learn, and I'm not sure I'd really say I've mastered it yet; if I had, perhaps it would be easy. lol.

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Heathen Visibility Project Year in Review 2020

2020 has been a hard year for making visibility photos and pics because of the restrictions on gatherings and travel. Nevertheless, participants made some images of themselves, altars, objects, and other heathen relevant images.

I talked about the Project on the Witching Hour Spellcast radio show in September, in addition to talking about my new book Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path. If you missed the show, you can hear the recording on this link: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/witchinghourspellcast/2020/09/28/pammits-porch-erin-lale-asatru-and-the-heathen-visibility-project

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

I've performed this curse removal spell the same way since I was in college. I didn't have any other heathens to consult with back then so it was designed in a more general pagan way than specifically heathen but I'm not going to change it now after 30 years of doing it the same way. In addition to telling you how I do this spell, including a short video, I'm also writing about why I did the curse removal and what happened after I did it.

I recently did this spell in my companion Tom's house. He's in the hospital and I noticed a string of odd glitches that led me to think there may be bad energy that needed to be dispelled in a more formal way than just gathering up whatever energy was around in my hands and tossing it towards the pyramid light saying "bad vibes away!" like I usually do.

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Heathen Visibility Year in Review 2019

2019 has been a great year for the Heathen Visibility Project. Even before I gave my speech on the Project at my local Pagan Pride Day, there was already a lot of momentum building. Many people were joining in with tagging their pictures with the heathenvisibility hashtag. Participants created Instagram channels devoted specifically to heathen visibility, mostly featuring images of altars. My Deviantart gallery for the Heathen Visibility Project mostly featured photos of altars, too, especially at first, but as the Project got rolling I started including more pictures of people. I acquired some new-to-me camera equipment, joined Shutterstock, and got some heathen visibility photos approved for inclusion on their site. Then Pagan Pride Day really gave the Project a boost.

Both the featured major speakers from out of town took photos with the hashtag sign. Pictured above is Oberon Zell with me as I hold up the sign and he holds up a poster of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, which he had at his booth. Selena Fox was in the group photo with the sign after my speech, and she even got the group to yell "Hail the heathens!" for a short video for her Instagram. Having the Project featured on such a big name's Instagram really got the Project a lot of publicity. For a more complete report on Las Vegas Pagan Pride Day, including the group photo with Selena, see my prior post "A Great Time at Pagan Pride Day 2019" here: A Great Time at Pagan Pride Day 2019

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Speech on Heathen Visibility Project PPD 2019

This is the text of my speech on the Heathen Visibility Project which I gave on Nov. 9th, 2019 at Las Vegas Pagan Pride Day. Next up on my blog will be a report on PPD and on how the Project went.

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