Ancestor Worship

Short version: blood doesn't count. What matters is spiritual connection.

You have many ancestors and they had many different belief systems. You aren't heathen because your ancestors were heathen. That way of thinking disrespects both your ancestors and your path.

You are not your ancestors. You can't be them, you can't think like them, your culture doesn't give you the same way of being in the world they had.

Whatever your spirituality, you have chosen it. You are not impelled by your ancestors or your ethnicity to choose a particular path. The spiritual world is limitless. Your job is to explore for yourself, not to blindly follow someone else's path.

The material presented in this video is considerably more nuanced than this simple summary. I was particularly taken by the argument that if you believe in reincarnation, each time you reincarnate in a new body you have a different set of ancestors. If those new ancestors took precedence over your own spiritual history, then you would be making the material world superior to the spiritual world.

The only way out of this dilemma is to conceptualize your spiritual path as being continuous from life to life. It's in your subconscious, not in your blood.

This video is basically a rebuttal of the 19th century idea that ancestor worship is connected to bloodlines. In the ancient world it was not about biology. It was about connections.

Those we call ancestors would be our adopted parents, as we see in Romans who followed the family cult of their adopted father. They would include the person for whom we are named, because that was a very Germanic way of conceptualizing reincarnation. They would include our cultural heroes (and gods) regardless of our blood connection to them. And they would include all who are well-disposed to us, by any connection we find meaningful. Basically, anyone in the spirit world who might be well-disposed toward you.

Our ancestors were looking for ways to extend and strengthen their social network and relationships. They wanted allies, not purity of blood.

• Arith Härger, "Ancestral Worship Exclusively About Blood-Line?", YouTube (Aug. 25, 2019).
• Arith Härger, "Cult of the Ancestors - Honouring the Dead", YouTube (Oct. 3, 2018).

Revised Nov. 4, 2019 to add link.

Weaving Wyrd

The energy of certain places is a real thing.

"Sometimes, whether created intentionally or not, certain locations can exude a ‘bad’ or malicious energy imprint within the wyrd fabric of a location or place.

"These energies can be human or wight generated, and can be so strong, its bad Hamingja can actually attach to unsuspecting visitors, especially if they happen to be Wyrd workers, and more so if they happen to be doing seiðr or ritual work in the negatively impacted location."

• Ivy Mulligan, "Wyrd weaving", The Germanic/Teutonic Center of Northern Cultural Arts (Aug. 6, 2019).

Edited July 11, 2020 to remove dead link.

Cowboy Paganism

For American Westerners like me it's going to be cowboy paganism. Nothing else makes sense. Everywhere else in the world neo-paganism is linked to place. Only Americans seem to think it can be heritage only.

Now and then I get flashes of what cowboy paganism would look like. Here's one glimpse:

• Hopi Origin Story | Native America | Sacred Stories | PBS

But really, it's going to take several generations of thought, debate, and development.

Tribal Heathenry

"What makes Tribal Heathenry so different from Neo-pagan Germanic organizations such as Odinism and Ásatrú? What does it stand for, and what are the main objectives of this movement within Heathenism?"

This video points out what should be obvious--neo-pagan reconstructionism is not the same as historical re-creation or re-enactment. I'm not so sure I haven't been guilty of that myself. We are not, or should not, be re-creating the past. We're not doing cosplay. We're not building a religion. Our goal should be to understand the world view of the past and bring it into the present. (See the difference?)

Our ancestors were life affirming. They lived in the world as they knew it. Before they invented other afterlives, when they died, they died into the landscape, to be here still.

We have that living spiritual world all around us. Our focus should be the community, not the gods; a community that includes the ancestors and genii loci. We should be looking for our spiritual allies among the people who had a reason in life to help us.

More Information

• Arith Härger, "Animism & Spirituality - Top 3 Q&A", YouTube (Aug. 4, 2019).
• Arith Härger, "What is Animism?", YouTube (May 15, 2019).

Banning Runes?

I don't think Sweden is banning runes, although everyone is freaking out about a badly worded statement that opens the possibility they might. Part of the fight against racism. Good God.

• History With Hilbert, "Is Sweden Banning Runes?" YouTube (May 31, 2019)

Seidh is for Women

Sorry boys. Seidh is for women (and gay men). It always has been. I'm always puzzled when I meet hyper-masculine men, devoted to the old gods, leaders in their communities, and then they claim to practice seidh.

Doesn't it seem that if you're reconstructing an old religion, particularly one that prides itself on its scholarship, you might want to preserve its basics? Even if they conflict with your own prejudices? Maybe particularly if they conflict with your own prejudices.

The goddess Freyja was the first practitioner of seidh. It's one of the arts of women, probably because it's association with spinning and weaving. The practitioner (seidkona = seidh woman) would use magic to foresee the future, then re-weave that strands of destiny. We don't understand much about how it worked originally, but it likely involved a ritualized act of spinning and very likely also had some sexual element, perhaps including penetration.

I've seen it suggested that in a warrior society the use of magic might have been seen as unmanly. A real man would confront his adversaries with force of arms, not sneak around with magic. It's an intriguing idea but I would want to see clearer evidence.

In our modern world there is nothing unmanly about weaving or spinning, and no shame to being gay, but in something that involves re-creating their religion we might prefer to preserve the old ways. The Rígsþula §28 says Jarl was taught the runes by his father Rig. Modern men who want to practice magic should be leaning on that passage as their authorizing verse.

Update

January 27, 2021: Jackson Crawford has a new video about Norse attitudes to predicting the future (see below). "The Norse have a really weird attitude toward knowing the future. It is awesome and a mark of your incredible wisdom if you can do it accidentally, without trying. But if you try, you're at minimum a weirdo, and probably a foreigner if you're a woman, and you're a pervert and among the worst people living if you're a man."

More Information

• Jackson Crawford, "Seiðr Magic and Gender", YouTube (Dec. 6, 2018), visited Oct. 27, 2019.
• Jackson Crawford, "Good and Bad Prophets (among the Norse and Us)", YouTube (Jan. 27, 2021), visited Jan. 27, 2021.
• Arith Härger, "#1 Spinning and Weaving in Seidr", YouTube (July 25, 2018), visited Mar. 25, 2019.
• Arith Härger, "#2 Spinning and Weaving in Seidr", YouTube (Aug. 25, 2018), visited Mar. 25, 2019.
• Arith Härger, "#2 Divination in the Germanic World - Seers & Oracles", YouTube (July 10, 2019).
• Arith Härger, "Terms for Magic-Workers in Nordic Paganism", YouTube (June 12, 2019), visited Oct. 27, 2019.
• Arith Härger, "The Magic of Seidr", YouTube (July 18, 2018), visited Mar. 25, 2019.

Revised January 27, 2021

Neo-Shamanism

Modern shamanism is very problematic. Staunch defenders and rabid detractors. My eyes glaze over. The debate typically resolves around opposing ideas that the word shaman originated in a very specific cultural context so must not be (or can be) used for analogous practices in other cultures. I don't find that kind of formalist argument very persuasive. In fact, in general it strikes me as the kind of argument often favored by shallow scholarship across the board.

One of the dimensions I think many people are missing is that there has been a sea change in the way New Age people deal with the past. The Boomer generation (often called the Old Hippies as a lighthearted reminder) is still very often focused on philosophies. They choose up sides. They're Buddhists or Theosophists or Wiccan or whatever. But always something.

On the other hand Millennials are often indifferent to ideological systems. They tend to focus on the tools. They like crystals, tarot, astrology, I Ching, meditation, or whatever. They want things they can use to do something they want to do.

I think the reason this is significant for shamanism is that the word has become a shorthand for a cluster of techniques that help the practitioner become their own healer. And at the same time it's a reminder that many of our ancestral cultures seem to have had village healers who can be plausibly argued to have been similar to American Indian medicine men. From that carefully worded sentence, one takeaway might be that neo-shamanism gives Americans their chance to copy American Indians without engaging in cultural appropriation.

If it can't be called shamanism then someone, somewhere had better find and popularize an alternative word. It's too useful to give up.

More Information

• Nordvig, Mathias. "Shamanism in Viking Age Nordic religion". YouTube (Apr. 25, 2019). Retrieved Nov. 9, 2019. An academic perspective.
• Osborne, Adam. "We Do Not Have Shamans: The Case Against 'Shamans' In North American Indigenous Cultures". The Wanderling, Retrieved Mar. 19, 2019.
• Penelope, Julia. "6 Reasons To Stop Using the Word 'Shaman'". The Wandering Witch, Patheos (Mar. 11, 2019). This is among the best presentations I've seen arguing against using the word shamanism. Retrieved Mar. 19, 2019.

Updated o add link.