Norse
The most common mistake new practitioners make is treating the Prose Edda like a Bible. They read it as though Snorri Sturluson was a reporter faithfully transcribing a living religious tradition. He was not. He was a 13th-century Christian Icelandic politician...
Norse
The Asatru Folk Assembly argues that Norse and Germanic paganism can only be practiced by people of Northern European ancestry. Their founding documents describe an integral link between ancestry and religion, between biology and spirituality. This is a specific...
Norse
“Wyrd bith ful araed.” Fate is inexorable. That line comes from the Old English poem The Wanderer, and it is one of the most famous sentences in the entire Old English corpus. Scholars and practitioners quote it regularly. Most of them do not explain what...
Norse
Two ritual forms sit at the center of historical and modern Heathen practice. The blot is a sacrificial offering, a way of giving something of value to the gods and spirits in exchange for relationship and favor. The sumbel is a drinking ceremony, a formalized...
Norse
The oldest surviving pre-Christian practice in the English language is not a hymn, not a prayer, not a description of a festival. It is a medical charm for healing a diseased patch of farmland. It was copied into a manuscript by a Christian monk. And it is remarkable....
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