Another distinction between much of Neo-Paganism and Heathenism is the relative position of male and female gods. In fact, some Pagans simply dismiss Norse Paganism as “patriarchal.” “People ask me, âHow can you be a woman in Ãsatrú?'” Alice Karlsdóttir told me. “It is true that there are more patriarchal aspects, after all, the head god is Odin. But I would call it âbalanced,' with a certain leaning toward male gods. It is true more men have been attracted to it than women, but that seems to be changing. And while some people in Ãsatrú have traditional role models in mind, I have not found men to be hostile to me as a woman. I have only had encouragement, and I am not a traditional woman. I'm independent, I'm unmarried, I'm an actress. Remember that in ancient Norse culture, women had much more freedom than in Greece or Rome. Women could own property, divorce their husbands and take back their dowry. It's true the most visible gods are Odin and Thor, and they have warrior values. They are very macho godsâso they appeal to men and more men join the group and people say it's a male religion. But I'm hoping more women will become visible.”
Heathen women also reminded me that the Norse goddesses are powerful figures. Freya, for example, may be a goddess of love and procreation, but she is also a warrior, a goddess of passion and change. Stephen McNallen wrote in
The Runestone:
Lest we fall into the snare of thinking of the Lady of the Vanir in the somewhat predictable female roles of sex goddess or promoter of the perpetual pregnancy, we must remember her fiercer side. . . . When we recall that she chooses half the battle-slain, when we reflect on her links to the valkyries, when we consider her many parallels with Odin, we are led to conclude that Freya's martial abilities must be formidable. . . . Her message is simple: women too, can be strong, assertive, and full of fight. As Frey tells men that they can be lovers AND fighters, Freya says the same thing to women.
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Alice Karlsdóttir and Maddy McNallen, Stephen's wife, both told me there is beginning to be a determined effort to foster the role of the goddesses in Norse Paganism, to “redress the balance.”
A beautiful description of Northern European Paganism appears in the journal
Yggdrasil,
put out by the American Vineland Association. It describes Heathenism as a religion with a deeply felt spiritual link to the land, the forests, the seas, our ancestors, our successors, and to the celebration of life experience. Its principles are honesty, honor, the value of one's word, keeping a healthy environment, placing principle above gain, and leading a worthy life.
Heathenism in the Twenty-first Century
There seems to be an amazing flowering of Heathenry today. Heathen groups now include a whole range of Northern European Pagan traditions. Volkhvy, a member of Minnesota Heathens, said, “Heathenry has grown in diversity.”
While the main mythic/cultural focus is still Aesir/Scandinavian & Germanic, new Heathen groups have formed around the Vanir gods and goddesses, the Anglo-Saxon, Sami, Baltic and Slavic peoples and cultures. Today, Heathens are anyone who follows one of the Northern European folkways. Basically, anything north of a line formed by the Rhine and Danube riversâthe cultures that were not subsumed by the Romans.
Heathen groups are also more diverse philosophicallyâthey differ depending on whether they consider themselves to be folkish, universalist, or tribalist. Those who are folkish tend to believe that your genetic heritage gives you easier access to the deities. Heather Demarest of the Eldhrinir Kindred says many folkish people are not racistâthey do not believe they are superior, but simply believe that “all people should follow the gods and goddesses of their blood ancestors, with none being âbetter' than the other. They do tend to believe that only those descended from Northern Europeans should follow Ãsatrú.” Some Heathens are tribalists. Demarest believes that the majority of Ãsatrú falls into this category:
They honor the ways and practices of the Germanic peoples, holding to the lore and sagas for inspiration while allowing personal gnosis to guide them when it is reasonable and possibly circumstantially supported by cultural/historical evidence. They feel the religion can be practiced by anyone, regardless of bloodline or race. So, in tribalism, there tends to be a balance or middle ground between complete cultural reconstructionism and personal revelation, as well as an openness to all those who feel called by the God/desses.
Then there are universalists, who use practices of other traditions as well as Heathen practices in worship. They might focus more on the shared culture of a geographic area or historical era, such as Scandinavian, Germanic, or Viking. Volkhvy puts it this way:
Universalists recognize that there really is no such thing as a “pure” culture; each culture has influenced and has been influenced by its neighbors. Given the tendency for expansion and interbreeding, almost all cultures contain members whose ancestors were not originally members of that culture. So for universalists, it's not necessary that your ancestors were Heathen, just that you have a deep attraction for one of the Northern Traditions.
Other Heathens say that the term folkish has taken on many different meanings to different people. As Ben Waggoner of the Troth puts it:
Some “folkish” types say that Heathenry can only be practiced by those of northern European descent. Others say that it comes most naturally to those of European descent, but that non-Europeans are capable of being Heathen if they choose. Still others seem to use “folkish” to mean “religiously conservative and anti-eclectic” without necessarily implying anything about people's race; others use “folkish” to mean “restricted to a tribe of people” without necessarily defining that “tribe” in ethnic terms. There are also a lot of “folkuniversalists” out there, who would recognize one's ancestry and ethnic origins as valid and good reasons for being drawn to Heathenry, but not necessarily discount other reasons.
Behind the debate over folkish, says Waggoner, lies something deeper. “A lot of Heathens are Heathens because they're looking for something more integral,” he says, “something that offers a complete world view, something that breaks away from what scholars of postmodernism call âpastiche.' Most feel that Heathenry is not and should never be âjust another option' in the marketplace that anyone can try out one day and abandon the next.”
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Many Heathen organizations are called “kindreds” and most are non-hierarchical. There are many different rituals, but among the most common are Blot and Sumbel. Blot, in its simplest form, is an offering to the gods. For example, mead might be consecrated, a libation poured and the drink shared. Sumbel is a ritualized toasting ceremony where stories are shared and sometimes oaths are given. It can take many different forms.
Heather Demarest says not only is Heathenism much more diverse, but the biggest change is the amount of information available through publishing and the Internet.
I think a lot of people started out in other paths because they didn't really know about us, or the religion. Once the information got out there, many people embraced it. Also, people are becoming more willing to share the information. This sharing and expanding of knowledge is helping Ãsatrú to evolve quicker and form a relatively cohesive practice that is more “newbie” friendly and less overtly challenging. We are also gaining information from shamanic journeying to help fill in some gaps of knowledge where written sources are lacking. This helps tremendously too as we get to know our deities better and realize that they seem far less concerned with infighting than humans are and that helps us to get a broader perspective and accept each other more.
One of the most exciting developments in the last decade or so has been research into shamanic practices within Northern European Heathenism, in particular the use and development of a particular form of trance-working known as seidh or, sometimes, oracular seidh.
Skill in various forms of divination was a specialty of the goddesss Freya, who taught it to the Aesir. The god Odin also practiced it.
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Seidh was used to describe many different shamanic practices, from calling up storms to prophesy. There is a description of seidh in Erik the Red's Saga. But the modern reconstruction of seidh really began when writer Diana Paxson began exploring shamanism. As Paxson tells it, she had been practicing neo-shamanism based on Michael Harner's teachings for several years, and finally had a chance to take his workshop in 1987.
At the workshop, “On the journey to the upper world” I rather unexpectedly encountered Odin, who became my teacher. After immersing myself in Norse culture by a year's study of the runes, I began to analyze everything I could find about seidh in the lore, especially, the account in the Saga of Erik the Red, and the poems in which Odin talks to the Völva in the Eddas. As I have reconstructed it, we begin by purifying the space and honoring the dwarves who uphold the earth and Freyja, Odin, Hella, the Norns and the ancestors. We then journey to Hella's kingdom, where the seer or seeress goes into deeper trance in order to answer questions.
Paxson's group, Seidhjallr, first presented the oracular ritual publicly in 1990. She has also taught many seidh workshops in other parts of the country and in Europe. After working with seidh for a year, the group, Hrafnar, began performing it in various settings, including Pagan festivals like PantheaCon.
In oracular seidh, as practiced by Hrafnar, there is often first purification with water and sacred herbs. There may be honoring of directions and of local nature spirits. Gods may be invoked. There is a transition into the world of Norse myth. There is drumming, sometimes other kinds of music, relaxation exercises, and journeying. There is a tranceinducing chant that is sung after the journey, which allows the seidh-workers to go to a deeper level of trance. Paxson writes that in seidh “as performed by Hrafnar, singing is used to change consciousness and raise energy, the journey to the Underworld serves to bring everyone to the source of knowledge, and the formulaic questioning keeps the visionary state under control.”
A number of other Heathens have developed other approaches to seidh, some based on Paxson's work and others independently. There are actually many different forms of divination used among Heathens. Some Heathens talk about “spae,” which many describe as a more passive form of divination than seidh.
Jennifer Culver is the founder of Widsith, a seidh group in Dallas, Texas. Her group has a different approach than Hrafnar, and is involved, for example, in many other kinds of rites that enhance luck, communicate “with the wights of the land and tap into various parts of the Heathen soul for reasons such as building strength and enhancing will.” She differentiates between spae and seidh this way:
If wyrd (seen by some as fate, a dynamic of the past shaping the present and what is becoming) is seen as a web, spae work is viewing the strands of the querent asking questions and where and how they intersect. Nothing is done with the strands, the seer is merely “seeing” information and relaying what is seen, be it an object, person, rune, or abstract form. I put seeing in quotes, because some people hear things or feel things as well. Seidh workers historically were working within a much more active context. These folk performed rituals involving weather working, removing the luck from a person, sending a nightmare, influencing battle, creating a fog, or singing on a rooftop so that the people who came out would fall down and die. Widsith's approach to seidh is to acknowledge that if negatives exist, the positives exist as well. We create rituals, for example, that enhance (not remove) the luck of a person.
There are many Heathens who don't do seidh at all or are even skeptical of it. For example, Stephen McNallen of the Ãsatrú Folk Assembly said seidh was not really part of the AFA.
Today, oracular seidh is a limited but accepted part of Heathen tradition. Paxson says that there are active seidh-workers in California, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Texas, New England, and Washington state. Groups are also being created in Florida and North Carolina. The performance of seidh at Pagan festivals has brought one form of contemporary Heathenry into a much larger setting.
Volkhvy says that this is just one aspect of how Heathenry has become more visible to the public. Groups such as the Troth have given public lectures. There is also generally much more of a Heathen presence at conferences and Pagan gatheringsâboth in the United States and in Europeâcompared to when I last updated
Drawing Down the Moon.
Ben Waggoner, a member of the Troth, says Heathens have given presentations and put on rituals at Pagan gatherings such as Starwood, PantheaCon, and also at local Pagan Pride Day events. “Although small family oriented Blots and Sumbels are still the prevalent form of group ritual,” says Volkhvy, “Heathen networking is increasingâin large part because the Internet allows isolated individuals and small kindreds to find each other.”
Volkhvy says that he has also seen a change in the attitudes of Heathens toward non-Heathen Pagans. “While they still disparage the âfluffy bunnies,' many are beginning to recognize that there are a core of groups in Wicca and Neo-Paganism that are just as serious about researching and understanding
their
traditions, as
we
are about our Heathen traditions. I see more of the attitude that âwhat you're doing is not for me, but I can still respect you as a person of honor and integrity.' This has spread to encompass non-European religions and cultures.” There is also more receptivity to alternate lifestyles and to gay and transgendered participants, something which did not seem common fifteen years ago.