It used to be the case that Folkish white nationalists and Heathens worshiped side by side. So-called “Folkish Heathenry” has been discarded by Heathens today as a deeply destructive ideology based in white nationalism. They believe that the natural religion of white people is some form of idealized Germanic Paganism, and that Christianity was a Jewish trick played on white people to get them to submit to Jewish domination. There are going to be times in your life when you pass through all these different attitudes towards the existence of the Gods.Īnd in practice, we generally all get along.įolkish white nationalists believe that a person’s “natural” religion is determined by their presumed race–defined here as either white or some shade “of color”. What’s the right way to believe? Sorry to say we don’t have an answer for you.Īnd you’re no less of a Heathen than anyone else because you don’t know, or because you favor one opinion over another. This openness can pose difficulties for newcomers who come from a religious background with a definitive doctrine that everyone is expected to espouse. Most Heathens would also subscribe to some degree of animism: the belief that places, objects, and even plants and animals are inhabited by their own spiritual beings, the “wights” or vættir.Some even express agnosticism (the existence of Gods cannot be decided on the available evidence) or atheism (Gods do not exist, or at least there is no compelling evidence to believe they do).There are also Heathens who espouse pantheism and say the Gods are identical with the entirety of the universe or panentheism where the Gods contain the universe and permeate everything in it, but also extend beyond it.An offshoot of that is Heathens who feel that certain named deities are actually hypostases (aspects) of others for example, Frigga’s handmaidens are sometimes thought to be hypostases of Frigga herself, reflecting different aspects of her total being.Heathens can also be found who espouse soft polytheism where the Gods exist and appear to exist independently, but are ultimately aspects or avatars of a greater single Godhead. Some Heathens acknowledge the existence of many Gods and may honor them all when appropriate, but focus their devotion on only one, a position known as henotheism.A common position among Heathens today is hard polytheism: the idea that the Gods are separate entities, with distinct personalities, existing independently of human consciousness, and able to act independently of humans or of each other.If a name is mentioned somewhere in the literature, or found on a stone somewhere, chances are you can find someone out there who has a practice surrounding that where that’s a deity.ĭon’t get discouraged! Just because something isn’t popular doesn’t mean it’s not right. Like we said before, this isn’t an exhaustive list of the only things you can possibly worship in Norse Paganism. That is to say, we’re just telling you who many people worship versus telling you who they ought to be worshiping.Just because the God you worship doesn’t show up on this list doesn’t mean it’s not a God! We’re defining “God” descriptively here rather than prescriptively. This list includes beings that are not considered “Gods” by all in the Heathen community. There are about 8 Gods that are very commonly worshiped, and then several that are less commonly worshiped. No one in Asatru is required to worship all the Gods or even to know all their names and stories. Even though in theory we can worship a great deal of Gods, in practice, most of us worship only a handful regularly.
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