Today, I want to talk about the gods.  I’m not going to comment on how anyone else thinks of the gods, because that’s not my business.  I’m only going to talk about my own polytheology.

 

To my eyes, the gods are real.  I’m a person, you the reader are a person, and they are likewise persons.  I’m influenced by Buddhism in that I believe there is an imminent and eternal Sacred behind all beings and all creation.  I like to equate this imminent and eternal Sacred, which I follow Mircea Eliade in calling the Numen, with the ocean. 

 

The Numen is an ocean and in it we are fish.  We swim through the Numen and it flows through us.  Without it we would die.  However, the Numen doesn’t have consciousness on its own, and it would be both pointless and ignorant to pray to it or expect it to have any emotions towards us.  Water doesn’t care for every tiny minnow or even every mighty giant squid.

 

The ocean/sea life metaphor has its limits there.  Smaller sea creatures don’t pray to the squids or the sharks.  However, just as sea life is comprised of mostly water, life in Midgard is comprised mostly of the Numen.  This is, at its simplest, what we mean or should mean when we say, “All life is sacred.”

 

For me, the gods are beings which are characterized by being more intensely concentrated of the Numen.  They are individuals with likes and dislikes, emotions and actions, and abilities.  No two are alike.  For instance, the Roman Apollo is syncretized to the Greek Apollo, but he’s still not the same.   The Romans could call Thracian Taranis Jupiter all they liked; it doesn’t make those gods the same person.

 

Since the gods are people, we can relate to them.   Since they aren’t alike in substance to a human being, we have to have different relationships with them.   We meet, we find we get along, and we maintain our relationships.  The important difference enters into how the gods are transcendent in a way we humans aren’t, with powers we can’t touch, so we need to be “in tune” with them in order to understand the back-and-forth between them and us.  I can’t draw any generalizations or put forth any ground rules because, as I’ve written already, they’re individuals.

 

It should be remembered that not all gods will like you, just as not all human people will like you.  This is their prerogative, and shouldn’t be taken personally.  If you appeal to one deity and he/she tells you to get lost, unless you are an absolute unlikable bastard there’ll be one out there who thinks you’re keen and who will be happy to make your acquaintance.  I struggled along with God the Father for decades before finally accepting that he wasn’t the one for me.

 

I tend to deal more with land and nature spirits than gods, and recently confirmed that I need to pay a lot more attention to my ancestors.  Blessed be. * Like the gods, they have preferences and dislikes.  Along with the nature spirits can come gods of place.  In the past month I’ve been struck by how powerfully Kokopelli strides through the southwest.  He’s always lived there and he gets lots of attention and energy from admiration lavished on the petroglyphs that depict him and from suburban gardeners putting iron cut-outs of him by the sidewalk up to their front door.  He’s the Lord of Fertility there, and since we are planning our raised-bed gardens, we need to be on good terms with him. 

 

Archetypes may be applied to gods, but they aren’t gods, and gods are not personifications of archetypes.  Gaia, Rhea, Demeter and Cybele are all great Magnae Matres,  but they aren’t “faces” of the archetype of Great Mother Goddess.  The Virgin Mary and Anahita are virgin mothers, but they are not the Eternal Virgin. 

 

The overwhelming reason I’m not Wiccan is because of their theology.  “All gods are one God, all goddesses one Goddess does not fly with me.  Not my polytheology.

 

I’ll let Allison Lonsdale explain it all to you.  Her CD, "Live at Lestat's" is full of science, spirituality and god-talk.

 

 

 

 

*I say “blessed be” when “Hail!” doesn’t work, and where I would previously have said, “Amen”.  It’s not heathen,  but since I “viked” it from the Wiccans, I claim it as spoils.

Trothmoot!

Last weekend was Trothmoot 2014.  It was only four hours away from San Diego, in Tehachapi Mountain Park.  Sven wasn’t interested in going, and left for the hacienda instead.  Dreya and I packed our seabag and dufflebag respectively (same item, different names) and headed north.

We got lost on the way, of course, but turned around before driving off into the Mojave.  We made the sloooooow climb up into fresh pine woods 6,000 feet up. 

 

I’ve commented elsewhere on the site.  It was on the side of the mountain, so there was a lot of walking up and down to do.  The showers and mess hall were down, halfway up were the cabins and ALL the way up were the vés. 

Our cabin, which was a bunch of Army beds, was only our kindred, so that was nice.  No surprises when it came to roommates.  Dreya has a knee injury, so she spent a lot of the weekend relaxing and reading, and there are a lot worse settings for that.

I arrived on guard against New Age nonsense.  There was some, but it was old New Age, like Viktor Ryberg stuff.  I’ll admit it, I think galdrstadr (aka Runic Yoga) is just plain dumb.  The runes are the runes, yoga is yoga, don’t cross the streams. 

Dreya and I came up Friday, so I got to my first workshop after lunch.  It was a lecture on Braucherei from Rob Schreiwer.  Braucherei is the Pennsylvania Deitsch form of magic, and the de-Christianized form of it is Urglaawe, which is what Rob practices and teaches. Braucherei has been in the USA since about 1680, and since 1680 it has preserved runes and rune usage, herb lore, and a figure named Dame Holle.  Holle is very similar, possibly cognate with, the German Frau Holda, and on Saturday afternoon we had a Holle blot that was very moving.  I was particularly happy to find out that one of Holle’s totemic animals is the Bear, since I’m married to Sven, who is a bear.

Next was Finding Freyr, which is a ritual I’d attended at Pantheacon and really liked, but I didn’t go again.  What was different this time was that they’d brought an enormous Freyr cart, with an image of the god in it, riding along with a pregnant lady.  The lady has a devotion to Freyr, so regardless of the actual circumstances of conception, FREYR HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT. 

I socialized a bit and then sang a song at the Skaldic Competition.  I didn’t win, but people seemed to like it and sang the chorus with me.  It was a parody of the song “Dynamite” and I wrote it about Odin.  I’ll post it later.
 
After dark was the spae ritual.  I remain skeptical about the seidhr practiced by the seeresses, but I did ask a series of questions directed towards one of my ancestors.  I now think I may have contacted the wrong one, (there were a series of them with the same name) but nonetheless, I was taken aback by my ancestors and pretty emotional afterwards.

I am very annoyed to say I fell asleep and missed both Loki blots/parties up at the vés.  SO annoyed.  The Saturday night one I’m sure Loki had something to do with it because apparently the other Loki fans and I were up at the hill, which was dark, at the same time and we didn’t see each other.  No idea how that happened.

Oh yes, the vés.  Freyr had the largest, since his cart had to be parked in it.  There was a nice, kind of abstract statue of him carved out of a log.  On either side of him were bowls of condoms, and he had plenty of the usual offerings, of art, jewelry and drinks.
 
The Frigga vé had a large sculpted egret in front, which pleased me because I often see egrets and now when I see one I will also think of her.  Inside was a chest, drop spindles and wool, and a blue and white interior.
 
The Odin vé was a small tent with a cushion and plaid blanket for sitting in front of his small, handmade statue.  It was dark and a little scary which of course is how the Old Man likes it.

The Thor vé was fun.  I contributed my Thor statue and my two small straw goats that usually live in my office.  There was also a crocheted Thor doll, and I can’t remember who made it, but she could make a fortune on them.   Other items in the vé included a helmet, axe, and a keychain in the form of a lightning bolt that made thunder noises.
 
Finally, there was the Loki vé.  This was the vé that got the most love.  The centerpiece of the altar was the Paul Borda enthroned Loki statue, with a copy of the Snaptun  forge cover below.  There was a big bowl of party favours, and the kids rapidly found them and ran around blowing out the curls of paper.  Someone put a pink flamingo in front of the vé and it was decorated by coloured paper streamers, a green shag rug, a pot of paper flames and a banner that said in runes, LOKI SAVES.
 
The Freya vé was sad.  It had few items in it and it was tiny and messy. 
 
Another high point of Trothmoot was the divination workshop.  Originally there had been two workshops on divination scheduled for the same time.  This was deemed rather silly, so they combined them.  The workshop was three parts: what we know about Norse divination; modern forms of divination and using the runes in the modern era. 
 
I had a specific question, and it was suitable for an answer based on divination.  About a month or so ago, I woke up and my heavy silver Mjollnir, that I’ve been wearing since just before I went to Afghanistan, fell off its chain and to the floor at my feet.  The chain didn’t break or open; it was still clasped about my neck.  At first I thought maybe I’d been “let go” and I should pursue another religious path, but after the spae ritual, I had been rethinking that.  My new working theory was that perhaps I was to focus my spirituality on the ancestors and land spirits.  My instincts were correct; the runes confirmed my theory.  So that alone was worth the cost of the weekend.

Dreya and I took off before breakfast on Sunday, and we saw a doe walk across the road and up the slope on the other side, into the trees.  It was a beautiful coda to the weekend, but I was still very glad to be down near sea level and on our way back to San Diego.

Radical Farming

I recently saw a post on FaceBook which pointed out that raising your own food has become a radical act.   Not only have most people in the US and Canada become dependent on supermarkets, the unprocessed foods in the supermarkets have drifted farther and farther from nature.  The GMO controversy aside, the breeds of animals and strains of fruits and vegetables are so cultivated and groomed that our ancestors would not recognize them.

Being dependent on anything is not heathen.  Being separated from our ancestors is not heathen.   These things being true, Sven’s and my intention is to grow lots of heritage variety vegetables.   Heritage vegetables are hardier in their local environment, never artificially modified, and have flavours unlike the ones you buy in the store.  They’re also living pieces of history.

Enter Native Seeds/SEARCH (http://www.nativeseeds.org ).  While it’s possible to buy heritage seeds from any number of sources, Native Seeds/SEARCH is near us, and Sven and I have been devotedly locavore and intent on using local businesses for years now.  Native Seeds/SEARCH has a seed library where you can borrow seeds, “returning” them by keeping some seeds aside from the plants grown and bringing them to the library.   It sells collections of seeds bundled by ability to thrive in the seasons specific to our part of the desert.  Furthermore, they are seeds for foods grown by the local indigenous people, the Tohono O’ohdham.  As their “about us” page says:

“Our story began in 1983 following a profound realization. While working on a Meals for Millions project to assist the Tohono O’odham Nation with establishing gardens, NS/S co-founders Gary Nabhan and Mahina Drees presented tribal elders with broccoli and radish seeds. “What we are really looking for,” the elders replied, “are the seeds for the foods our grandparents used to grow.” This revelatory remark inspired the formation of Native Seeds/SEARCH as a collector and preserver of these endangered traditional seeds.”

Moving to a remote place in search of freedom and starting a farm there is really the Asatru activity par excellence.  Going a-viking was done for revenue in order to pay for a farm, or make money after a bad year on one.  The Norse who went to Iceland, Greenland and even further did so because they were discontent with some condition under which they had to live.  Sometimes it was a king being too heavy-handed with his power.  Sometimes it was a sentence of outlawry.  Towards the end of the Viking era it was religious persecution by Christians.  Moving out of California so that we can grow our own sustenance from non-corporate seeds, raising free-range chickens for eggs and making cheese from milk produced by our happy goats is not a hippie dream-come-true.  It’s our gods-blessed heritage.

Hail, and blessed be!

Northern Heim, Desert Clime

My heathenry vacillates between Crunchy Nature Mysticism and Free Religion for a Free and Independent People.  Sven and I are happy to say we’ve begun the process of reconciling both.

This past weekend, we took possession of a four-acre hacienda in the Arizona desert.  For the time being we have to split time between California and there.  We bought the hacienda from an older couple who were moving to Florida.  The husband openly admitted being pagan and the wife was wearing an “Orthodox Druid” t-shirt when we arrived on Saturday.  They were finishing up the cleaning.

We had a barbecue so the neighbours could say goodbye to them and meet us.   All the houses are on big plots of land; our four acres is typical.  This means we’re within eyesight of other houses, but getting to one involves some effort because all the roads are dirt.  Norse homes would have been further apart, but we still have a harsh climate to contend with to reach them.  The Norse grappled with winter and short growing seasons.  We will have to flourish in extreme heat and aridity.  As with most peoples who live in harsh climates, the neighbours are very friendly.  I’ve already been told I can get my first chickens from a family who have a large flock.

Here’s what is on the land currently.  The house has porches on four sides, including a screen-enclosed one (called an Arizona room).  There are desert climbing roses.  There’s a fountain in the back which Sven is “meh” about, but apparently the local birds adore it.  There are enormous outbuildings that only need ventilation and climate control to be breweries.  There is an olive tree, an orange tree, a grapefruit tree and a pecan tree.  D., the wife of Sven’s friend Karl, and I have many plans for those pecans.  My own eggs plus my own pecans equals the best pecan pie ever baked.

                                                                   

Posted because I like Soviet Realism

Besides chickens, the plan includes goats and gardens of heritage vegetables.  More on that in another column.

Our hacienda is also our temple.  We’re very keen on honouring the local nisse, and with those trees we have many.  I poured wine to all of the trees on the property and Sven introduced himself.  There is a large playhouse with a bridge leading up to it; Sven and I are in negotiations as to whether it should be a meditation room or a small hof to Odin, Thor, Frey and Loki.  The farming itself is a sacred act, and I think we are going to find ourselves invoking Frey, Thor and Sif more than we ever had.

Saturday night found several of us standing on top of an outbuilding, watching a magnificent sunset and then an uncountable number of stars and a perfect view of the new crescent moon.  It’s the best, and only going to get better, we think.  Hail, and blessed be.

Catching my breath

I've been working on a court martial that's eaten my life.  Last night I got home at 2030 (that's 8:30 pm for you civilian Americans).  I had time to check Army e-mail , shower, eat some chili Sven had made and go to bed.

In other news, I'm reading a book on keeping a small flock of chickens.

Cause the Sagas Tell Me So---Nah!

Sven and I are a couple of professional people who live in an urban part of Southern California.  It seems kind of crazy that we’d adhere to a religion practiced in the coldest parts of northern Europe until no later than the 11^th century.  Granted, Sven is Danish, and his soul has been sound since he rediscovered the religion of his people.  I married into it, and as with everything I do, I have to think about it deeply and develop it. 

Two things strike me as I read the lore, the Sagas, and the archaeology.  1. Asatru is a religion whose values are terribly needed in the United States right now.  2.  The Sagas are nothing on which we could build a modern religious society.

While Asatru was practiced from Germany to Greenland at various times through the centuries, most of what we have written down about it is from Iceland.  The Icelanders have a particularly interesting take, because they were essentially a bunch of anarchists and outlaws who found kings and Christianity too restrictive and struck out on their own.  For that reason alone, Asatru should have appeal to Americans and Australians in particular.  It is a religion that sustained rebellious outcasts in the wilderness.

Personal responsibility and self-sufficiency are the Asatru values par excellence.     Honesty and reliability define what a good person is.  One does not have to be “nice” or religiously devout.  One does need to be generous and aware of his or her place in the ancestral line.  There is nothing wrong with being rich.  There is nothing wrong with being proud of what one has achieved.  These are sentiments I think we desperately need right now.

The rules for living are laid out for us in the Havamal.  We honour the gods and ancestors through our deeds.  They aren’t interested in how often we pray; in fact, since prayers are accompanied by sacrifices, they would prefer we pray too little than too much.  A gift demands a gift, and there is a difference between giving in thanks and giving in order to create an obligation.  The best offering to them is through what we do with our lives.

A good Asatru is a hero.  They are someone whose descendants will want to talk about them for years to come.  A good Asatru is free; they have something to call their own, preferably real estate and livestock.  “One’s own home is best…even if it is only a roof and two goats, it is better than begging.” (Verse 36)  Their clothes are clean and neat, even if they are old and worn. (Verse 61)  They face challenges with courage.  In the face of physical adversity, they find something, anything, that they can still do.  “The handless can drive cattle, the lame ride a horse, the deaf be brave in battle.” (Verse 71)

This was true in 1000 C.E. and it’s true today.  I’m not going to go on a rant about the sense of entitlement a lot of people have, and the widespread sentiment that we need government to protect us from ourselves.  Make a stand!  Refuse to be a victim!

Still, there are safeguards to keep this from becoming an Ayn Rand-esque, dog-eat-dog world.  Generosity is mandatory, although within the limits of reason and not creating obligations unless obligations are needed.  A generous person of worth is referred to as a ring-giver.  Memorable heroes and heroines have excellent feasts and take care of their household and anyone assigned to it.  Being wealthy was praiseworthy as long as the wealth was accompanied by proportionate generosity.  No one approved of a miser.

A praiseworthy man (and this was the purview of men exclusively) would be a regular attendee and participant at the Thing, sometimes referred to in translation as the Assembly.  This took place a couple of times a year, and it was when lawsuits would be decided and different transactions were conducted.  The kind of man who was admired would be knowledgeable about the law and willing to stand up for people in their lawsuits.  Engagement in the community was encouraged, and to not attend the Thing regularly was seen as a kind of selfishness.

In the modern world, we tend to be involved in the community around us whether we like it or not.  The internet and dense centers of population have forced that on us.  An Asatru who isn’t involved with any religious group would do well to get involved in something around them in the local community.  Being around other people and forming friendships is an essential part of the Asatru experience.  On the day of this writing, several heathens we know are fighting a fire in West, Texas, caused by an explosion in a fertilizer plant.  For this, I hail them.

After all this, it feels anticlimactic to point out where examples of a heathen lifestyles fail in terms of ethics.  Very simply, we cannot live the way the medieval Scandinavians did.  The Icelanders were rural, living in extended households a good distance from the next farmstead.  It was an unbelievably hostile environment, where to not take in strangers could easily mean their death from the elements.  Over and over we read about people taking in travelers who they would rather not have in their home, but the laws of hospitality demand it.  We modern Asatru live in cities and towns usually, and a traveler can check themselves into whatever motel or hotel is most convenient for them. 

There was also a much larger danger from each other.  We read about how man X would kill man Y as they both walked down the road because Y insulted or offended X in some way.  The correct thing to do would be to go to the nearest farm, tell the occupants of the killing, the sentence being agreed upon at the Thing.  To tell the nearest people of the death made it manslaughter; if the death were concealed, only then was it murder.  Even with the intervention of the Thing, a killing like this could lead to a long feud, with the body count rising when warm weather allowed people to move around where they might encounter each other.

Obviously, these cultural norms do not work for us at all.  I’d want to say to anyone who might romanticize the Icelander’s lives that I’ve seen where this can lead.  Pastunwali is the social code of Afghanistan, and it’s very similar to that of the Icelanders.  Again, most people live rurally in either farms or small villages.  The normal dwelling is called a qalat, a walled compound with several buildings and an extended family with retainers living inside.  One building with always be the guest house, and a person who arrives in a village with no place to stay will remain at the mosque until the end of evening services, whereupon someone will invite them to stay in their guest house.  At Ramazan, an admirable man will set up a large tent outside the walls of his compound to feed anyone who comes to him, even if they are just passing by on the road.

They also have feuds, which are mediated by councils of elders.  As in Iceland, just because a case is settled doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over.  Disputes over land and water can go on for decades, with man X killing man Y because man Y’s uncle killed man X’s father.  No one ever forgets a wrong, and certainly no one ever stops the feud because a wrong was generations ago.  These are things that happen in the Sagas, and it’s no way to run a society.

In the developed world, we have laws, law enforcement, and courts with a judicial system derived from Scandinavian law.  While often heathens will dispute how far criminal law should extend into peoples’ lives, the court system is a massive improvement over a code that leads to endless blood feuds.  Since the laws are of Scandinavian origin (granted, by way of England), they aren’t even foreign for heathens.  These have proven effective in keeping men from killing each other as they walk down the road.

If anyone wants to put up a tent in front of their house to feed passerbys on the holidays, though, I think that that too would be an improvement to their community. 

Hail to the givers!  Hail the High One!

In which I get all universal and sycretistic

So, yesterday I was sitting in my kitchen, drinking a glass of wine and reading the Kabbalah—

Why are you looking at me like that?

Anyway, I’m reading Daniel Matt’s “The Essential Kabbalah”, because I want to read it from an actual Kabbalah scholar before I tackle Dion Fortune’s take on it.  I’m Asatru, but my first mature investigations into “other religions” were through British occultism.  (Starhawk’s “The Spiral Dance” when I was a teenager doesn’t count.)  It’s really reminding me of something that’s been bugging me for a while.

Asatru’s theology is really underdeveloped.

This is difficult for me, because I’m a theologian from a religion with a highly developed theology.  I could chew up texts for breakfast and spit out exegeses that would make you weep at their complexity.  Now I have texts written by detractors, or people who just wanted to preserve stories, and not a lot of what believers actually believed.  We know more and more about how they practiced, at least in the upper classes, but not what was going on in their minds and spirits when they engaged with the gods.  The Kabbalah is giving me some insight into what could be or might have been if Asatru theology hadn’t been stomped out by Christianity before the Scandinavians could write down any of their own thoughts.

I’m heavily influenced by Jung, so I believe very much in archetypes that are universal.  Some of these archetypes are inevitable; if you speak an Indo-European language, the common concepts are going to occur and recur.  I’ve had a joke for a long time that when we uncover the human ur-religion, it’s going to involve a mandala and a dying god.  To that I would now add a sun goddess and a World Tree.

Above my desk at work, I have a small prayer rug that I bought in Kuwait.  I was looking for a nice one as a souvenir, much as non-Catholics buy rosaries as souvenirs when in Mexico.  I found a design that intrigued me and the shop owner, a fixture at the PX complex who I thought of as Tragic Rug Merchant because of his hangdog demeanor, told me, “It’s the Tree of Life.”

“I’ll take it,” I said, and didn’t haggle about the price.

As anyone who’s been reading my blog for any length of time knows, I am very into Yggdrasil.  As the World Tree, Yggdrasil carries in her branches the Nine Worlds.  I saw on my rug that the Tree had ten flowers on it:

                                            

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life has ten Sephiroth, and SHUT UP THAT FINAL FANTASY COMMENT BEFORE I SHUT IT FOR YOU.  Note, however, that one of them, “Tipharet”, is the trunk of the Tree.  The trunk of the Tree is Beauty.  So there are nine others.

Now I have to back this truck up to 2008.  I had just spent three months at paralegal school in Ft. Jackson, South Carolina.  My barracks had been old and literally rotting around us, full of black mold and roaches the size of my thumb.  We were crowded in like cattle and I got pneumonia.  During my time there, I had been trying to balance my Catholicism and my Asatru, knowing that Icelanders did it for a couple of centuries before Christianity fully took hold.  As I got sicker, I started leaning harder on the Catholicism because, well, I knew how to engage with it in times of difficulty. 

I got out of Ft. Jackson by the skin of my teeth.  I graduated with honours, but I firmly believe that if I hadn’t gotten out the night I did, I would have died. 

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  I had found a little part-time work with a company that was making calls on behalf of the Democrats.  I was ready to go, until the script they handed me was one urging voters to vote for a candidate because he supported funding abortion clinics.  That was against my religion and I believe in doing the right thing, so I was fired.

As I walked out, I thought to myself, “It’s all right.  My reward will be great in Heaven.”

Then I thought, “No it won’t.  There’s no reward, and there isn’t any Heaven.

“There isn’t any Heaven because there is no God.”

I went home, boxed up my prayer books and statues and put them away.  I felt a weird liberation, because the Big Sky Daddy of my childhood had just disappeared in a puff of nothingness. 

“What about the gods?” Sven asked.  I told him that he and I existed and that our cat existed, so I had no problem believing that the gods exist too.  After all, the Norse gods are not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent.  They are mortal.  They get hungry, thirsty, cold, sleepy, etc.  I could completely grasp that.

But what was it that made them gods?  I’ve read everything from ancient aliens to deified ancestors.  Since Asatru is so intensely about the Ancestors, I can deal with that second possibility.  Still, what made them deity?  What is the sacred?

I’m going to jump over a lot of writings by the Dalai Lama and Mircea Eliade here, right back to the Tree of Life.  In the Eddas, it says that no one knows the roots of the World Tree.  In Kabbalah, the Tree has its roots in Ayin Sof, the unknowable.

My theological hypothesis, drawing from everything I’ve read in my lifetime, which is a lot, is this.  “God”, or “The Sacred” or “The Numinous” is like water.  We are made of water, we are surrounded by the water in the air.  If we do not have water, we will die.  That which has a concentration of this Numinous manifests the Sacred.  In his book The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade described the feeling one gets in the presence of such an item as “mysterium tremendum”.  He gave the image of a “primitive man” looking up at a mighty oak tree that’s been struck by lightning and getting a feeling of this mysterium.    The Ayin Sof is the Hebrew for this unknowable, ungraspable, Sacred.  The Tree is the emanation of the Sacred, the part that can be knowable.  The oak tree of the “primitive man” is a further expression of the Tree.  As above, so below.

The gods are, to me, beings that are more fully permeated in the Sacred than we humans are.  When a human is deified, like many of the Ancestors or heroes (the Romans were particularly interested in deified humans), that human has come to be more fully permeated in the Sacred as well.

This leaves room for lots more theologizing.  What does it mean when Odin is speared to the Tree, offering Himself to Himself?  What are the roles of the nissemen we find in nature?   Do non-Norse gods exist, and if so, what is Their relationship with the Aesir and Vanir?  What about the Runes?  I’m working on this, and when I think of more, I’ll share it. 

Hail to the Gods!  Hail to the Goddesses!

Hail to the bounteous Earth!

With wit and wisdom grant us,

And healing hands, besides!

Hail the Tree!