Redpill me on heathenry

The best sourse we have is Snorri Sturluson, who is a Christian, he decided to record some Norse Mythology in the Prose Edda so that people interacting with older Icelandic Poetry would have a frame of reference to appreciate the metaphors and references to the old religion contained within them.

It's not prefect because Snorri was in fact a Christian, as evidenced by his other works (conversation was generally regarded as a positive experience, baptism especially) and also he was writing a few hundred years after Iceland had Christianized, and over a thousand years after the advent of Christianity in general, we can at least see some Christian influence upon Norse Mythology with the death of Baldr.

Finally, because Snorri was a Nobleman who was in conflict with the institutional Christian Church at the time of his writing, he had to take pains to ensure that the Edda did not come across as Heretical, so some of the information contained within it might have been deliberately adulterated.

Lastly, knowing about the Mythology still doesn't mean we know a whole lot about their rituals or ethical tenets.

But if you want to get an idea of how people subscribing to traditional Norse beliefs lived, read the Sagas.

So there is NO chance in hell of reconstructing the original pagan religions, because all writings got burned and all practitioners genocided (or burned)? Christianity really is 'the religion of peace'...

>Oh shit lol they attacked priests and stole their shit
>Acheivement

Well, what do you mean by original pagan religions? The problem with this kind of thing is that people make assumptions even by asking questions. How do you know pagan tradition was universal across areas of Germanic pagan influence, and didn't differ on a regional basis? There was no universal scripture like with the bible(and even that had its own schisms).

Plus, you could be discussing Germanic paganism or British paganism or Slavic etc etc

yeah, a bunch of rabid plunderers who prided themselves on having no human compassion whatsoever.

In my area they are still referred to in this day and age as the "scum of the north", who spared no children, women or elderly people, as we know from the countless eye-witness accounts of those days.

very spectacular indeed, on a nigger scale

>founded normandy, russia, many cities across Northern Europe including the capitals of Ireland, Ukraine, and Latvia, discovered America 500 years before Columbus
>not great achievements

Nigger, those religions replaced even older religions. Stop crying because you happen to live in the current year.

They never really had writings.

Why in godsname would you want to reconstruct the pagan religions anyway?

Have you read how cruel and inhumane Celtic human sacrifices were? The druids used to cut open a man and "read" the future from his screams, his death-agony, and the way his guts spilled on the earth.

The same Romans who burned Christians on sticks actually banned Celtic druid practices within the Roman Empire because of (and I quote) "excessive cruelty"! The only religion the Romans banned altogether next to Christianity.

>inb4 hurr Roman lies and propaganda, >muh_romantic_warped_vision.jpg is obviously more credible.

Since you seem like the type of person who'd benefit from this approach, why don't you just pick up a copy of Mein Kampf and let good old uncle Adolf give you the "Yeah it sucks the old religion doesn't exist anymore. It would be nice if it did, but the Catholic Church is pretty neat, so let's just go with that. " spiel.

It's really sad to see euro descendants try to recreate their faith.

I think moreso pity, it's just so not based on reality but also strange because millions of Africans were sent to the new world, stripped of their names and culture, shuffled about and generations of were under laws that made their faith illegal and yet all these African faiths survive and are growing and spreading to continental North America, Europe and Asia.

It's like Euro's ancestors couldn't retain their culture and now their descendants play dress up to pick up the pieces.

There are differences between Shia and Sunni islam and wahabism etc, but there still is a general idea.
I am interested in the general idea behind Germanic and Norse paganism

>original pagan religions
>writings

top kekles

How? I'll say i belive in witchcraft so i dont become a wizard

The divination of brute force, and of everything evergreen as possession the power to overcome death. That is why taxus etc were holy plants.

They did not share our current moral standards, nor those of our ancestors of the last millenium. That is something mostly introduced by Christianity.

There, force and virility prevailed. No compassion for the meek.

There are enough sources left for us to distill from there the general picture..

so as a consequence of paganism, the most competent survive?
Sounds like a belief system which accidentally helps us evolve, with no welfare for the lazy and incapable where would we be today

now you are romanticizing what you know would be an utterly inhumane system

you could also do the same for meso-american paganism with its known daily human sacrificing, its excessive cruelty

Sunni and Shia are two sects of one religion. There isn't much reason to believe that there was any sort of monolithic pan-European pagan religion. What you're attempting to do would be like if you said that there was a core idea of Sunni, Shia, Druze, Baha'i, Ishikism, Shabakism, Yezidi, Zoroastrianism, Yarsanism, Mandaeism, et al. And it's just a shame that you can't find those original writings so you can reconstruct it. It's asinine.

youtube.com/watch?v=1A5MhgRpda0
Oh no, we both know it would be GOAT

BTW if you know that all our superstitious beliefs today are pretty much remnants from paganism days, we could never even have evolved this far while still embracing paganist superstitions

there were much, much more witch-burnings and witch "trials" during pagan days, in fact the early Church was very much against that practice

it was only in the 16/17th century that witch-trials became really excessive, and only in Western (catholic and protestant) Europe, fueled by -guess what- peasant superstitions, or those very remnants of paganist beliefs

(read Tacitus on the pagan Goths persecuting their "hallerune" hell-runes or witches)

A bit like Catholicism

Nonsense. Whatever your opinion of the Roman Catholic religion, you cannot deny that it is an extant religion that has been in existence and development since its beginnings. No one has to dig through secondary and tertiary sources, fill in the rest with their own imaginations, in order to approximate something they can call Catholicism. There's a Catholic Church that can tell you what Catholicism is. No one had to rediscover it.

Source for this?

J. A. MacCulloch. "The Religion of the Ancient Celts -

sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/rac/rac19.htm

Thanks mate

>redpill me

I'm not sure why people get so hung up on the authenticity of the rituals. We're talking about decentralized faiths without set doctrines, with considerable variance in practice and belief.

That's exactly the point. Anyone pretending to be a pagan today is just playing fantasy. It's not about the rituals. The religions themselves are lost. Indeed it's the ritual elements we know the most about.

I think you missed the point. What we know the most about is the mythology, and believing in the gods, taking lessons from their examples, etc. are all quite possible in this day and age. So what if we don't know how the specifics of how they worshipped? Those weren't set by central doctrine or the viking pope.

>Anyone pretending be a pagan today is just playing fantasy.

I'm sure you'd post pictures of fat men in unfashionable hats if someone said the same about your faith.

Mythology is not religion, per se. Particularly not in its modern sense. This is the Karen Armstrong approach to the history of religion, and it's a lot of semi-pious nonsense.

Admitting ignorance but then claiming to be the thing you're ignorant about is called make-believe.

>I'm sure you'd post pictures of fat men in unfashionable hats if someone said the same about your faith.
I don't have one, but if I did, I would probably choose a faith that actually exists, rather than make one up and call it one of the preexisting ones.

>Admitting ignorance but then claiming to be the thing you're ignorant about is called make-believe.

I don't think anyone actually claims to be exactly the same as old Germanic pagans. They all admit that they're grasping blindly in the dark on that front.

>I don't have one, but if I did, I would probably choose a faith that actually exists, rather than make one up and call it one of the preexisting ones.

But Germanic neo-paganism does actually exist. :^)

>Mythology is not religion, per se. Particularly not in its modern sense. This is the Karen Armstrong approach to the history of religion, and it's a lot of semi-pious nonsense.

Who cares? All religion is uempirical irrational woowoo. What makes one better than any other?

>They all admit that they're grasping blindly in the dark on that front.
Funny, I never hear this when they want to identify with the persecutions of pre-Christian beliefs during the eras of Christianization. Then's it's all "your church has been trying to kill me for centuries!" Nah, you don't get to claim that heritage.

Ignorance isn't a thing to aspire to. It's like claiming that all major political parties are unempirical irrational woowoo, so why bother knowing anything about politics or government?

The Truth isn't "uempirical irrational woowoo", though.

This isn't comparable to politics or government, which have very tangible material effects. What you believe has no verifiable effect. Germanic neo-pagans are no more ignorant of the divine than even the greatest Catholic scholastic (that fine tradition of asspulls and wordgames).

Yes it is. You can't verify a single thing of your faith empirically. Find me one atom of soul, then we'll talk.

You believe that religion has no tangible material effect on the world? How did you get the Internet under that rock?

You'd be surprised the influence that the medieval scholastics had on the way you think and approach knowledge. I think probably the same can be said for the old pagan systems.

I don't particularly want to go down this rabbit hole, but "empirically prove to me that empiricism is wrong" is one of the most idiotic arguments imaginable, yet I see it every fucking day. Weak.

No, I believe each person's individual belief has no tangible effect on their life. Of course organized religion has a tangible effect on the world. But you can't be any more or less ignorant of the divine because there's no fucking way to actually know the divine, and centuries of tradition or scholastic arguments don't change that. The efforts of the scholastics in regards to theology effectively amount to nil.

I wasn't asking you to prove empiricism wrong, I was asking you to prove your own stance right. Faith is fundamentally unempirical, and thus irrational, and thus woowoo.

>empiricism is the end all and be all of Reality

Fuck this meme.

The difference is that Roman Catholicism has been a driving force of Western Civilization since its inception as an institution. Norse paganism is mainly known today for Marvel's Thor. 90% of people don't even know or care that he was "worshipped" by backwater savages who slaughtered women and children stole from the defenceless, and didn't have the foresight to write down and record any of their "discoveries".

I never claimed any such thing.

Kay.

So your criteria for the truth of a religion is how many books it wrote, or how many governments it strongarmed into cooperation?

Also the Roman Catholics did plenty of robbing and murdering, see: the Cathars.

>No, I believe each person's individual belief has no tangible effect on their life.
I think this is demonstrably untrue. People very often shape their lives based on what they believe. That's what being a rational being is.

>But you can't be any more or less ignorant of the divine because there's no fucking way to actually know the divine, and centuries of tradition or scholastic arguments don't change that.
You can very much be ignorant about the world around you. It does no good to strive for ignorance about the claims regarding the divine in the society in which you live. I had a recent conversation with someone who was baffled by the abundance of seafood available in early spring. This person grew up in the United States, in a predominantly and historically Irish and Polish Catholic city, and had no idea why the world around him functioned the way it did. This is ignorance, and it's not to be lauded. Sure, not being aware of Lent is relatively minor, but there are much more important issues where not knowing what the fuck is going on around you hurts.

It's also why arguments about metaphysics are always so retarded in this culture. If you'd read the scholastics, you might already know that they answered some of these questions you keep repeating over and over, and you'd be able to get closer to the heart of the matter. As it is, someone sufficiently trained in theology has pretty much nothing they can learn from you, and will continue in their false beliefs.

No, you weren't asking the interlocutor to prove his stance right. You ignorantly asked him to defend a belief which he almost certainly does not have: that an atom of soul can exist. You are asking to see a material extension for something which by definition has no material extension. This is dumb.

>unempirical, and thus irrational
Unempirical, and thus unempirical. You can't establish empiricism as a presupposition and then bitch about someone else presupposing something else, equally as irrationally as you.

>You can very much be ignorant about the world around you. It does no good to strive for ignorance about the claims regarding the divine in the society in which you live. I had a recent conversation with someone who was baffled by the abundance of seafood available in early spring. This person grew up in the United States, in a predominantly and historically Irish and Polish Catholic city, and had no idea why the world around him functioned the way it did. This is ignorance, and it's not to be lauded. Sure, not being aware of Lent is relatively minor, but there are much more important issues where not knowing what the fuck is going on around you hurts.

Once again, because you're apparently quite thick, ignorance of the material world is not comparable to ignorance of the divine. We are all equally ignorant of the divine.

>It's also why arguments about metaphysics are always so retarded in this culture. If you'd read the scholastics, you might already know that they answered some of these questions you keep repeating over and over, and you'd be able to get closer to the heart of the matter. As it is, someone sufficiently trained in theology has pretty much nothing they can learn from you, and will continue in their false beliefs.

And I nothing to learn from them, as they know nothing of the divine (which I should state is not synonymous with metaphysics itself). They've used their lives for nothing. Their arguments have amounted to nothing that can convince someone who doesn't already agree.

>No, you weren't asking the interlocutor to prove his stance right. You ignorantly asked him to defend a belief which he almost certainly does not have: that an atom of soul can exist. You are asking to see a material extension for something which by definition has no material extension. This is dumb.

Are you fucking autistic? Are you fucking retarded? Did you experience brain damage? Or are you just being intentionally stupid? It was an example, you stupid cunt.

>irrational
>1. not logical or reasonable

If it's not empiric, it's not either of those.

Sit down and take your ritalin, m8.

>Once again, because you're apparently quite thick, ignorance of the material world is not comparable to ignorance of the divine. We are all equally ignorant of the divine.
You asked why anyone should care. I just told you why. Your response is entirely irrelevant. It doesn't matter as much whether there's actually a knowable divinity that anyone is closer to than others. What matters is that people believe this, and throwing up your hands and saying "who cares" has no effect on their activity in the world.

>It was an example, you stupid cunt.
IIt was an example of a very retarded argument. If that's the example you came up with, I'd hate to see what other retarded logic you've got floating around in your head.

Funny thing is that these Pagan reconstructionist groups are surprinsingly purist. But since all they have about their own religion is two books, they are in fact Pagan Sola Scripturists/Lutherans.

>You asked why anyone should care. I just told you why. Your response is entirely irrelevant. It doesn't matter as much whether there's actually a knowable divinity that anyone is closer to than others. What matters is that people believe this, and throwing up your hands and saying "who cares" has no effect on their activity in the world.

You didn't provide a reason to care. You brought up an example of something completely incomparable and tried to conflate it. The scholastics wasted their lives on a snipe hunt, and a Germanic neo-pagan who bases his knowledge of religion on Marvel comics knows as much of the divine as they do.

>IIt was an example of a very retarded argument. If that's the example you came up with, I'd hate to see what other retarded logic you've got floating around in your head.

I-it, hahaha. But seriously. it was an example of something that would empirically prove his position, I don't care if he brings me an atom of soul, I care if he brings me empirical proof. But he can't, because his beliefs are fundamentally unempirical. How's that head injury treating you?

The difference is, if you believe that there is a sufficient source and norm for faith, worship and practice, then demanding that religious authorities not hold the faithful's consciences captive to anything other than that norm makes perfect sense.

It doesn't make sense with the sort of syncretic reconstructive religions of neopaganism. You'd have to imagine some kind of new revelation, or just make it up as you go along. And being a purist about something which you know you don't have a sufficient apprehension of makes it just as much a game of make-believe. You don't know what the religion really taught and practiced, but you'll be damned if you'll let anyone teach and practice it.

>The scholastics wasted their lives on a snipe hunt, and a Germanic neo-pagan who bases his knowledge of religion on Marvel comics knows as much of the divine as they do.
Why should I care what YOU believe about the divine? Statements like these are entirely uninteresting and continually veering the thread off-topic. Either shit or get off the pot.

>it was an example of something that would empirically prove his position
It wouldn't, though, as presumably for this interlocutor an atom of soul is a contradiction in terms. It's like asking to be shown a square with no corners. What you've done is torn down a strawman and patted yourself on the back for how smart you are.

You're part of the "hurr durr, norse pagans are just playing make believe" crowd, and you're going to bitch at ME for dragging the thread off topic.

>oh boohoo, why is this guy giving me a hard time for mocking someone's religion?

Get over yourself, you sad cunt.

>It's like asking to be shown a square with no corners

No, it's like asking for empirical proof of something, you blithering imbecile. I didn't say the lack of empirical proof proves that it doesn't exist, just that it is indeed not an empirical concept. Does this trigger theists now?

Witches are incredibly sexually "liberated" for the most part. Buy into their bullshit and you will be fighting it off with a stick. They are also disgusting degenerate drug-addicts who are little better than your average junkie save for muh mysticism. Serious practitioners or occult buffs usually treat them with disdain for their lack or self-discipline, constructive drive, and feeble-minded ego.

t. left-hand path witch

Ignore the crusader role players whole can't even read ancient Greek or latin.

Modern asatru is primarily reconstructionst religion and the modern groups are decently scholarly. They derive their practices from sagas and written records, folk mythology and archaeology.

Modern heathenry is divided into asatru (Icelandic/nordic), theodish(Anglo saxon) and then continental which is the smallest and has the least info.

I recommend a practical heathens guide to asatru, as a good primer. The culture of the teutons is a must read as well to really understand the worldview. Elves, wights and trolls for the folk mythology and the magical side of things.

If your interested in theodish ideas see hammer of the gods

Thanks.

>You're part of the "hurr durr, norse pagans are just playing make believe" crowd, and you're going to bitch at ME for dragging the thread off topic.
To be fair, that is a topic relevant to the the thread. Saying "it doesn't matter because according to my beliefs about the divine nobody know anything about the divine" is doing nothing more than saying "I'm posting in this thread to tell you I have no interest in this topic. I, an anonymous poster, want to let everybody know, for once and for all, that I don't care about this." Welp, let me click your upvote button and give you some karma. You earned it, pal. I've followed and respected your personal opinions for a long time.

>No, it's like asking for empirical proof of something
So it comes back to "you can't empirically prove that empiricism is wrong." Yawnsville.

Asking to be shown something empirically, that is, to be made sensible with your own material sensational faculties some thing that is by definition not extended spatiotemporally, is nonsensical. You didn't ask to be proved that something exists. You asked to be proved that something nonsensible is sensible. Oh, that's really going to convince me that you're not an idiot.

Let me know if you have questions in particular while I rant a bit. One thing you'll notice quickly is that heathens love to fucking argue three heathens meeting is 8 arguments. A few basic ideas that largely divide the community up.

Folkish-universalist
>Folkish believe you need ancestry to practice and associate it with white identity. Universalists don't do that obviously and tend to be more eclectic.

Pure-electic
>purists are obviously super analysis about sources and trying to prove/base their practices in sources, they frown heavily on new things. Electics tend to be a bit more new agey and are willing to borrow or implement new ideas they like.

>yet all these African faiths survive
Tell that to the Khoisans.

Building off of this heathenry is organized by family(blood) or by tribe (association). As was back in the there is no central authority (don't let those Icelandic cucks fool you, their group has no authority and are raging faggots). I'm a universalist asatru who is fairly eclectic but I try and follow ritual if it's there.

Varg and his kindred are as equals with mine and the Icelandic kindred. But we have no authority or even real demand religiously to associate with eachother.

As an example Christians are all "brothers" and comrades in faith. That is not really a concept or accepted (I think foolishly) in heathenry.

My opinion on the matter:

Humans change over time, languages changes over time, cultures changes over time, and so do spiritual beliefs. Modern paganism is not invalid just because it is different from how the original practitioners used it, because I am certain it would have changed over time anyway had it never been wiped out. So, I think paganism is just as valid as any other religion, because 'We do not know exactly how they practised it!' is not a valid argument.

>To be fair, that is a topic relevant to the the thread. Saying "it doesn't matter because according to my beliefs about the divine nobody know anything about the divine" is doing nothing more than saying "I'm posting in this thread to tell you I have no interest in this topic. I, an anonymous poster, want to let everybody know, for once and for all, that I don't care about this." Welp, let me click your upvote button and give you some karma. You earned it, pal. I've followed and respected your personal opinions for a long time.

No, that isn't a topic relevant to the thread, not in the slightest. He asked for books about it, and instead got shitposting. My point is very simple: the authenticity the old beliefs doesn't matter, what matters is faith in the gods and taking lessons for the mythology, because this is not a centralized faith in which orthodox practice matters.

And you can't know anything about the divine. Find me a single objective argument about the divine, one single argument that works on all comers, and I'll spin on a fucking dime.

>So it comes back to "you can't empirically prove that empiricism is wrong." Yawnsville.

Where the fuck did I ever say that, you fucking imbecile?

>Asking to be shown something empirically, that is, to be made sensible with your own material sensational faculties some thing that is by definition not extended spatiotemporally, is nonsensical. You didn't ask to be proved that something exists. You asked to be proved that something nonsensible is sensible. Oh, that's really going to convince me that you're not an idiot.

Blah blah blah. You're a fucking cunt. Proving something spiritual empirically would not prove empiricism wrong. What are you not getting about this? My entire point there is that faith isn't empirical. Do you dispute this?

The reality is that asatru is what you make of it, you'll primarily interact with your ancestors, land and house wights (spirits) than the gods. My daily practice is focussed on that with occasional offerings that focuses on the gods themselves.

Another thing is asatru is largely a worldview and mindset thing rather than a ceremonial/dogmatic affair. There is big backlash against perceived Christian influences and certain "modern" ideas as people try to reprogram how they think about the world. An example of this inner vs outer world.

For modern heathenry the inner is your family first, then tribe. Everything else is outer. This creates a problem in modern society where many heathens reject association with non inner heathens and tend not to place heathenry as a tribe. It also poses questions like how does nation state fit in here? Is there a middle world?

I believe so since we are modern heathens not 800s ones. So yes we do need to rethink how we view eachother and society.

What if you're a heathen that doesn't have a good relationship with your family?

Like, full disclosure my parents were a couple of abusive drunks that continue to do nothing but cause me chaos and strife whenever they show up in my life. Am I engaging in a theological misbehaviour by not associating with them?

Yes and no.

For the ancients yes, frith is unbreakable. It was literally the foundation of their society and laws. Nowadays not so much.

I'm of the opinion that yes you can, there are others that would tell no, frith is frith your parents are your parents and you are obliged to them.

It's hard sometimes too because people like to tangle the ancient culture with the religion. Yes they are related and it's not smart to totally disregard either. I believe it is more important to craft a working relationship with your ancestors, family (if you can), wights and the gods.

Worry less about trying to recreate ancient customs and focus more on our present and trying to fit this new model of life into modern society and it's workings.

Frith was useful when a bad season meant death, warfare and raiding was common etc. You needed that bond and ability to rely on your tribe. Now it's a little differant. If you're parents are complete cunts and you are worse off then cut them off. Frith is also mutual, if they aren't holding their end you aren't obligated either.

Bullshit new-age romanticism masturbation communities

Human sacrifice is essential to pre-christian paganism I tell you

lol no, african polytheism did not survive among african slaves in the New World.

>But you can't be any more or less ignorant of the divine because there's no fucking way to actually know the divine
That's some pretty heavy Abrahamic baggage you've got there.

The greatness of the Kingdom of Norway and the Kingdom of Rus, that is the only actually great viking states happened well after christianization. They were also genuine christians unlike the politically inclined eternal Dane.

>I think paganism is just as valid as any other religion
It would be if the practicers actually believed in it. Most of them are either LARPers or muh heritagers

user that path leads to Hell

Roman Catholicism was invented at the council of Trent

>A bunch of barbarians killing and raping innocent people and burning the books copied in the monasteries.

This is constructive! Thank you!

Germanic and Norse are somewhat the same. The Germanic tribes traveled north to Scandinavia and established new writing systems from the Eldar Futhark by making short twig and rok runes. The only major difference between Norse and Germanic paganism is the names of the gods.

Is slavic paganism related to those then? They are somewhat similar, they probably have the same roots. I might be wrong, just trying to learn!

They're both descended from PIE religion and as such there are many similarities - Perun, for example, is a widely-venerated sky god in the form of a strong, rugged man with a red beard who travels in a flying chariot pulled by a goat and who has a magic axe (or hammer, depending on the source) that will always return to his hand when thrown. Most of the stories about him involve him hunting down monsters and he is associated with thunder and lightning, war, weapons and fertility.

revived for potential

>The Germanic tribes traveled north to Scandinavia
OTHER WAY AROUND THANK YOU

And the pre-historic ones came from the east.

I'm not a pagan I'm a son of God but I do magic from time to time when I get bored. AMA I guess.

Why both christcucks and liberals so triggered by the fact that not everybody wants to worship the eternal Jew? I mean if they despised paganism so much as they claim they do, why not leave it alone? But in reality there is something incredibly subversive about an exclusivist and particular religion like paganism that gets under the skin of proponents of universalistic totalitarian ideologies such as marxism and christianity. I'm not a pagan myself, just an observer.

That's metal as fuck man.

No.

>This is what christcucks actually believe.
Highest of keks

Bold claim.

We're not going to do this one again are we.
Well not in this thread anyway.

>Because no one died before Jesus

Care to illuminate the truth for me please? What writings are there? There is the kolbrin (although I'm not sure about its credibility).