Heidhrinn Sidhr?

I did not first step foot upon this path with a vision in mind of creating any sort of new Tradition. I simply wanted to give people a gateway to something deeper; something brighter and more hopeful than what I had encountered within the community into which I suddenly found myself thrust. We need a new way of doing the Old Way. I began that journey with Norse Witch, but as I have had the great pleasure of meeting more and more of my readers, even becoming dear friends with some of them, I have come to realize that the material in Norse Witch is just the tip of the iceberg. People need so much more; people crave so much more. Indeed, I crave so much more! People don’t just want something they can do in a “time of need”, because let’s face it: in the world in which we are presently living, almost every moment of every day is a “time of need”. Since my first book was published, I have more or less become the “you’re not doing it wrong” guy. Unfortunately, over the course of the last year, what I have come to realize is this: most people are doing it wrong. They just happen to also be the people pointing the finger at the rest of us and screaming those ugly words!

Looking back, I’ve been Pagan for nearly twenty-five years, practicing within various different pathways. We began attending rites at the Temple of Witchcraft shortly after our arrival in New England, and I absolutely adored the community there, as well as the ritual; I stand behind what Christopher Penczak stands for. Yet standing in that circle, it was Angrbodha and Freyja who spoke to me, and the next thing I knew, I was on a path lit by the myriad colors of the Northern Lights, whether I liked it or not. I did not choose the Norse Path; it very truly chose me. I very quickly discovered that I did not mesh well with the greater American Heathen community. Every community has its “witch wars”, sooner or later, but there are certain buzzwords which cause huge fights in the American Heathen community that one simply does not encounter as often in other circles of faith. Words like “UPG”, and “Wiccatru”, and “cultural appropriation”. When you say words such as “religious experience”, or “magick”, or “faith” in most areas of the American Heathen community, people get “uncomfortable”, and that’s putting it mildly. That’s me being “nice”. Say the word “shaman”, and somebody is bound to come after you with a pitchfork screaming about “cultural appropriation”. Say the word “Ancestor” and too many people will either ask for your full pedigree and DNA analysis, or jump to the wrong conclusions about how volkisch folkish you may or may not be. Yet in other realms of the Pagan community, I see people quite willingly and openly discussing their varieties of religious experience, their practice of magick, and their faith while those around them in the community actively show support or ask reasonable and equally supportive questions. I see people discussing shamanism, realizing the actual scholastics behind the use of that term. I see people talking about the Ancestors (of Kith, Kin, and Path) and Mighty Dead, without anyone needing to produce their pedigree like a show pony. And I have to ask myself, why is that? What’s the difference?

In order to root out a problem at its source, first you must discover that source, and I have. No one is going to want to hear about it, of course, as it’s a very ugly history of which people should very rightfully be ashamed. The source—the ugly truth that is writhing beneath that shell that no one wants us looking under—lies in the birth of the Heathen community in America in the 1970s. American Heathenry was birthed out of the racist, white supremacist legacy of World War II Germany and the nazi regime (not capitalized on purpose). And no matter how far some organizations here in the States have attempted to rise above that legacy, the simple truth is, up until maybe five years ago, every bit of English-language source material that existed for people to study came out of that initial seedling. Even now, those original racist authors are still being quoted by otherwise inclusive authors. That “scholarship” forms the basis of ninety-nine percent of what people have been spoon-fed since the 1970s, inclusive of ideas such as the forced Christianization of Scandinavia (didn’t happen!), toxic masculinity as historical truth (didn’t happen!), The Lore as a primary source (it isn’t!), homosexuality and other-genderedness as something that was “frowned upon” in the ancient Scandinavian world (it wasn’t!), shamanism as cultural appropriation (it isn’t!), folkishness as “okay” and historically apt (it isn’t!), and genuine religious experience and magick as the exclusive realms of modern Wiccans (they aren’t!).

So how do we replace this false worldview, which the American Heathen community has been actively fed since the 1970s, with something far more accurate, yet entirely new? It’s time to stop paying lip service to “living the ways of our Ancestors” and start actually listening to what real history teaches us about those people of the past, their way of life, and their faith: therein lies the core of Heidhrinn Sidhr. In Iron Age Scandinavia, every person was a farmer first, and very real wolves were “always at the door”. Drought and famine were real dangers. Betraying your neighbor could mean an ill harvest, not only of the psychological friend-to-friend sort we think of today, but of the very real sort; the kind where there is a shortage of people to aid in bringing in the crops, so someone is bound to starve to death over the winter. Communities were tight-knit, and those communities didn’t just include the living, breathing human beings, but also the Ancestors, the Landvaettir and the Husvaettir, and yes, even the Gods. They were not some “pie-in-the-sky”, far-away notion; They were “wild and alive”, and at work alongside everyone else. No one had time for scholarly debate: a person simply experienced what they experienced, prayed what they prayed, and pulled their own weight. And yes, they did pray: they poured blot, they made offerings by fire and in rivers; they whispered words into the dark that they knew were heard. They wore amulets around their necks to keep their Gods close; kept images of their Gods in their pockets and tied to their belts; hung images of the Gods on the posts within their homes; buried images of the Gods beneath the very foundations of their houses, that They might always be near. Faith wasn’t a question, it was a fact of life.

We may not still be a people made up of “farmers first”, but we are still a people of the Commonfolk. You, me, and the guy next door all put our pants on one leg at the time; we all have our work that we do; we all have our bills that we pay. Some of us have families that we raise, while others are lucky enough to have families that we are being raised by. The wolf is still always at the door, whether its name be debt, or hunger, or disability, or sadness, or injustice. Drought and famine are still very real dangers, the primary difference in our modern society being that now they are the drought and famine of the souls and heart, rather than simply of the fields and their fruits. Our communities have crossed the boundaries of the village, or even the town or the city, and leeched over into cyberspace: we’ve gone global. Yet the Landvaettir and Husvaettir are still a part of that community, as are the Gods. And those Gods have not remained static, pasted onto the pages of some dusty old book, but are, indeed, as wild and alive as They were in the time of the Ancestors. They still crave us, and our attention, just as we, hopefully, crave Them. Tapping into all of that—all of those commonalities which have come down to us, through the ages—is our ticket to shine, and we stand at present on a precipice, where we can choose to shine, or we can choose to fade into the ugly obscurity bred by continued post-war bullshit, with all of its ongoing racism (and all of the other negative -isms) and debate, ridiculing of religious experience, and faith, and everything and everyone else, including the Gods.

For when people say things like “I don’t worship the Gods; I recognize and respect Them, but I don’t worship Them”, or “I will not bow or kneel before the Gods”, we are, in fact, ridiculing Them. We are effectively spitting on the Ancestors as well, and all that they believed and practiced. We are belittling those people who came before us on this path, with their bracteates and hluti and guldgubbar, as little more than superstitious idiots. When people use the symbols and supposed rhetoric of the Norse Tradition to triumph racist ideals, or sexist ideals, or homophobia, or any of the other nasty things currently being “triumphed”, they are erasing the true history of inclusion and adaptability practiced by the very Ancestors they supposedly “treasure”. There is nothing “shiny” about such attitudes; nothing bright or clear. It is a travesty of what Norse Tradition genuinely was in the time when it was actively practiced. Nothing about that makes the Gods smile; nothing about such attitudes can hope to make our lives or our world a better place.

So forget all those things that you thought you knew, and come on this journey with me. We call this way the Heidhrinn Sidhr: The Way of Heidhr, or the Custom of Heidhr; perhaps even the Tradition of Heidhr. For that is what it is meant to be: a bright, shining, clear way forward, without all of that WWII baggage. Park the Panzer at the door; crush that ugliness writhing within that forbidden shell, and let’s go forth and shine: every day, in every way, as did our Ancestors. If you are here, I do not need to see your pedigree, nor do the Gods, nor, indeed, do you. You know who you are; you know, far better than I, what you crave. Blood has nothing to do with it; this is either in your souls, or it is not. Rise from the ashes and the shadows, and let us find a new way to shine!