Sane Heathenry
“Sane Heathenry” is an important concept to us. There are many forms of Asatru and Heathenry in the modern day, and many groups and organizations devoted to the Gods of the North. Sadly, not all of those groups were established for the noblest of reasons, nor are they currently led by the noblest of people. There is a small but vocal group of people calling themselves “Asatruar” who are in fact using Asatru as a cover for racism and the promotion of agendas involving hatred, elitism, and exclusivity. Other groups of Asatruar are headed by persons who make caricatures of the Gods, and re-write history to satisfy their own ridiculous conclusions about what it meant to be “Germanic” in the past, and what it means to be “Germanic” now.
To be clear, we don’t even consider these people to be “Heathens” or “Asatru” as we understand the terms. But people have the right to call themselves whatever they like. The need for the Idavoll Kindred to distance itself from these unsavory people is great. To this end, we have been given permission to adopt a criteria for “Sane Heathenry”, based on a work by a friend of ours who wrote this for her own reconstructionist Pagan community. What follows is a simple criteria for “sane heathenry”, which we enthusiastically embrace.
The Idavoll Kindred are modern Heathens who…
1) Know that reconstructionism is the foundation of the practice and that academic work is not the entirety of our religion, or any other religion. A scholar is not necessarily a religious or even spiritual person, and scholarly works do not have the final say over what “true Heathenry” is or what Heathens and Asatruar have to believe. History and scholarship are vital, but not vessels of final and unquestionable authority; they are, in fact, interpretive and open to question.
2) Also know, in addition to the above, that the Germanic people were a widespread group of linguistically and culturally related people who spanned an entire continent, who moved around a lot, and who traded and interacted daily with other cultures, learning new things and sharing their own ideas, all without dishonoring the memories of their ancestors, nor their various unique understandings of the Gods.
There was no single “Germanic” religion, no single “correct” thought, nor such a thing as “pure Norse” or “pure Germanic” religion in the ancient world. Those modern Heathens who want a Bible can convert to Christianity or any other religion that strictly follows a holy text. The main surviving myths of the Northern Peoples are not piles of “dogma waiting to happen”- they are cultural stories, sometimes metaphorical, sometimes semi-historical, which come to us from a relatively late period in history, and they are sometimes colored by the non-Heathens who wrote them down and translated or interpreted them. This doesn’t mean that they are useless- far from it. This means that they aren’t works that simply fell out of the sky, pre-written by the Gods, and Heathens who rely too much on written words are failing in their duty to consider things for themselves and to listen to their hearts.
All mythology and history is interpretive. It is our privilege and duty in the modern day to read the Myths and come to our own understandings of them, and to give an ear to what we do know about pre-Christian times, when it comes to what we decide to believe. But following our hearts and trusting the Gods is just as important.
3) Understand that it is Fate, and the Gods themselves who decide who follows them, who can hear them, and how they are heard, and to judge who can or can’t, or to appoint people to do so, is arrogance. The unscientific and arbitrary notion of “race” is also not an issue in who can and cannot worship the Gods, or who the Gods will call to themselves.
Many people who look non-caucasian or non-European also have European ancestry, and can easily be kin to the same Vikings that crossed the Atlantic, or the Normans who stormed the shores of England; you cannot tell who is “Germanic” just by looking at the color of their skin or hearing the sound of their last name- and on top of that, the Gods don’t listen to just “Germanic” people; Odin was the creator of the entire world, not just Germany and Scandinavia, and Ask and Embla were not the first ancestors of just “Germanic” people- they represent the ancestors of all human beings. The proof of whether or not the Gods speak to any one person is in that person’s words and deeds, not in popularity contests.
4) Realize that sane reconstructionism is possible without becoming either an eclectic Pagan or a New Ager, and that skepticism of others’ beliefs means also being skeptical of our own, and not just choosing between what we want and don’t want to question.
5) Comprehend that, on the note of above, we cannot pick and choose what elements we reconstruct from ancient Germanic societies without also being able to choose what elements of Heathen religion we want to practice today. If we can agree that bringing back “slavery” isn’t a good idea for the modern world, we are just as free to agree that slaughtering live animals in sacrifice isn’t a good idea, and this is up to our own individual consciences- you aren’t a “good” Heathen or a “real” Heathen because you do or don’t choose to engage in any certain “revived” practice. You are a “good” Heathen when you believe in the Gods, respect your ancestors, and seek to live in harmony with them the best way you know how.
Culture and religion go hand in hand whether we wish to admit this to ourselves or not. The ancients were not perfect and neither are we; therefore we should not seek to imitate them perfectly, but to determine at great length what practices are feasible in the modern day in order to best honor and serve the gods.
6) Recognize that individual people in the distant past, like modern people, had certain deities to whom they were particularly devoted, and this is not a modern concept. Hence, having a personal experience with the Gods or a God, or having a patron deity or deities, or any form of personal mystical experience is NOT “new agey”, nor a sign that we believe we are of “elevated status”, and definitely not that we are somehow “special”, but simply that we feel a connection to Heathenism in our hearts, as ordinary human beings striving to honor and worship the Gods the best way we can–from the heart, not just a book.
7) Believe that ultimately, the will of the Gods and the power of Fate or Wyrd is far stronger and more accurate than any academic text, and that the Gods are far more important than anyone’s translation or analysis of the Eddas, et al.
8) Realize that Asatru, Heathenism, and all its branches, do not represent a “warrior” religion or a “viking” religion- they represent something far deeper than the deeds of a single social caste, or a group of young men going abroad in summer to raid other people further down the coast.
Modern Heathen “religious systems”, practices, and metaphysical understandings represent the inner essence of thousands of years of countless cultural traditions, understandings of Gods and the spiritual dimension of ancestry, and social customs and bonds. These modern Heathen faiths are not limited to anyone’s imaginative modern notion of what it means to be a “warrior” or “warrior gods”.
Modern Heathenry is not “male-oriented”; it is human-oriented, shared between men and women now just as it was in the past, all over the Northern World. Modern Heathen faiths are not violent faiths that advocate senseless violence, though they are descendants of faiths that were practiced in violent and dangerous times, and they still inspire us to be brave in the face of our modern dangers.
9) Understand that there were traditions (mostly engaged by females, but practiced by men too) in all times and places in the Germanic World that involved sorcery, divination, speaking or communicating with the dead and with spirits. All of these things would one day come to be called and remembered as “witchcraft”, almost always with negative connotations attached to the word by Christian writers.
There were and are Gods of nature and the produce of nature that were outside of the Aesiric family of Gods, and they had other animistic type practices all their own, and this notion is not a “new age” invention, but a matter of historical fact. Persons attempting to reconstruct these Vanic faiths or the practices of the Seið folk, the Helrunes or the Volvas, are not automatically undercover Wiccans trying to infiltrate “pure Asatru” or any such nonsense; they are not automatically “new agers”; they are legitimate parts of the modern Heathen reconstruction and revival.
We are Heathens who understand that in the end, it’s all about our Community and the Gods.