Heathenry (reconstructionism)

Heathenry is one of several modern revivals of historical Germanic paganism. Heathenry is the term used by many adherents of Germanic neopaganism, especially in the UK, and especially for strictly polytheistic reconstructioist (as opposed to syncretic, occult or mysticist) approaches.

Overview

While some practitioners use the term Heathenry as equivalent to Paganism, others use it much more specifically. It is used by those who are re-creating the old religion and worldview from the literary and archaeological sources, who describe themselves as "Heathen" in part to distinguish themselves from other pagans whose rituals come from other sources. Some North Americans use Heathenism with a similar intent. -

Heathenry differs from Ásatrú in North America in being generally more rooted in the landscape (Blain, 2002a, Harvey 2006 forthcoming) and in this may possibly be more akin to Ásatrú in Iceland and similar religious expression in Scandinavia. Heathenry draws on ideas of a living landscape, close to some expressed by indigenous religions elsewhere. Heathenry, therefore, for many adherents, is about creating a connection between humans and landscape, through the acknowledgement of land- and other wights, ancestors (spiritual and cultural, not necessarily physical) and other beings; it is therefore an animist religion drawing on (for instance) the Old English healing charms, the Icelandic Eddas and Sagas, and folklore elements in creating a religion from today from these and other resources.Shamanic or shamanistic elements are evident and practitioners may use seid and galdr, or shamanistic magic and sung magic, in rituals.

Heathenry relates to both the practices and worldviews of Heathens and to the practitioners - thus Heathenry can mean people who are Heathen, or what they do. In general, Heathens consider that people are called to the religion, perhaps by the gods or by the landscape, regardless of their ethnic origins. In this sense, Heathens are new-indigenes (Blain and Wallis, 2002).

Heathenry and reconstruction

Heathenry is often described as polytheistic reconstructionism. Not all Heathens agree with this - saying that their goal is to create religious practice and personal empowerment for today, rather than to imitate or re-enact past rituals. Basically, such construction or reconstruction works from the principle that earlier documents or artefacts (from literature or archaeology) hold clues to religious or spiritual practice and relationships with deities or spirits, and in particular to world-views or religious philosophies. These practices and worldviews and relationships can be used or adopted meaningfully within today's world, with practitioners concerned to locate practices, deities, etc, within culture and time, and to be able to point to some documentation or other justification for what they do.

The deities of Heathenry are those of Anglo-Saxon religion and of Norse Mythology - see list of Norse gods. Some British Heathens may also honour one or more Brythonic or Gaelic deities of Celtic Mythology. As with other polytheist religions, it is quite common for individuals to owe personal allegiance to a small number of deities while also recognising and honouring many others. In North America there is also Theodism or Þéodisc Geléafa ("tribal belief") which started out as a form of Germanic Neopaganism which sought to reconstruct the beliefs and practices of the Anglo-Saxon tribes which settled in England. þéodisc is the adjective of þéod "people, tribe", cognate to deutsch.

Practices and discourses (what Heathens do and say)

Many of the ritual forms of blót - making an offering - and sumble (or symbel)- a ritual of toasting - are discussed under Asatru. Indeed these forms generally serve to separate Germanic/Nordic religion from other pagan and neo-pagan practices. Heathenry is defined, however, as much by worldview and discourse as by specific rituals. The following list is given by Blain (2006, based on 2002a) for this article, from her ethnographic work with today's Heathens, of understandings or discourses of Heathenry that shape what Heathens do.

For more information on the blots used by the Odinic Rite, see the Book of Blotar.

Worldview and discourse

The following list is given by Blain (2006, based on 2002a) for this article, from her ethnographic work with today's Heathens, of understandings or discourses of Heathenry that shape what Heathens do.

references to myths and stories of the Aesir and Vanir - ‘the lore’, found in the Eddas and Sagas and some other mediaeval writings. Heathens will make reference to particular stories or poems, and explain to others where these can be found.
polytheism: a sense of gods or wights as discrete individuals, each with 'their own agendas'. That is, Heathens do not usually consider that different goddesses are 'aspects' of each other, but particular individual beings who can be spoken to.
cultural specificity or locatedness of myths or deities and ways of approaching these, including ritual forms (sparsely described in the lore). This means that the stories and poems – the understanding of the goddesses and gods and of the earth – have come from a particular period in history and particular places in the world. In a sense, the telling of the poetry and stories is rooted in culture and place.
the possibility of direct communication with deities or wights – not only can be spoken to but they will often speak back.
the possibility of manipulation of consciousness or ‘reality’ by the wights or deities, or through magic inspired by them: including galdr or sung spells, runic magic, and seidr or 'shamanistic' magic.
a sense that spirituality is not separate from everyday life, but informs it. For instance, Heathens will talk about their gardening, how they are raising their children, their voluntary work in the community, or how they deal with people at their workplace, linking these to examples in 'the lore'.
a sense of individual merit and responsibility, combined with community worth. In particular ideas about fair play, taking responsibility for one's own actions, honouring the motives and actions of others, are seen to come from 'the lore'.
an elaborate concept of 'soul' and 'self’, personal ørlög, and overall Wyrd. People's personal destinies are shaped in part by what is past, in part by what they and others are now doing, by the vows they take and contracts they enter into.
the Elder Kin (i.e. deities of Northern Europe) and other wights also are subject to the workings of Wyrd (Blain 2006, available http://ebooks.abc-clio.com).

For most Heathens, Heathenry is part of daily life. While Heathen ritual practices vary from the construction of elaborate blots or seid-rituals, to a daily communing with wights or deities, it seems to be worldview that most matters. Therefore, Heathens do not necessarily see 'magic' as an important or central constituent of their personal practice: but, as polytheists and, often, animists, the possibility of magic exists, and magical specialists form part of the Heathen community in the UK.

Heathens meeting in small groups on a regular (monthly, quarterly) basis will often refer to this as their blót. Offerings during a blot usually involve mead or other alcohol, sometimes food, sometimes song or poetry, specially written for the occasion or for a particular deity, is delivered as an offering. Rituals of blot (most Heathens in Britain will omit the Icelandic accented 'o') may be designed or even scripted for the occasion or may be spontaneous. Usual dress for a blot is whatever suits the seasons - many blots are outdoors, sometimes at sacred sites. Some Heathens will wear clothing reminiscent of Anglo-Saxon or Norse 'Viking' times, especially if the blot is open to the public or part of a larger pagan event (camps, conferences, etc.) Heathens who are also involved in reenactment are most likely to do this.

There is no single Heathen calendar of sacred days on which to make blot, and different groups or organisations celebrate their own festivals or sacred days as they see fit or as the season dictates: thus Winternights, for the end of summer and coming of winter, may be celebrated from early October to mid November in different areas of the UK. The festival most commonly celebrated is Yule, often over 12 days from the evening before winter solstice until New Year.

Runic magic

Many British Heathens use the runes of the Common Germanic Futhark (24 runes), others use Anglo-Saxon Futhorcs with from five to nine 'extra' runes, up to 33 in the case of the Northumbrian Futhorc, and a few, particularly Scottish Heathens, may also use the Scandinavian and Icelandic Younger Futharks. (The names Futhark and Futhorc relate to the sound of the first six 'letters' and the difference in spelling addresses a difference in sound arising over time and place.) Rune magic may involve galdr singing of rune names, carving taufr (charms), or drawing runes in the air or on materials, in addition to using runes on small slips for divination. Many Heathens use runes in some of their work, drawing runes for personal guidance or engraving their own ritual objects or indeed household items. However some heathens are known as rune specialists and others seek them out for teaching or for 'readings'.

Galdr

Galdr, already mentioned, may refer to chanted runes, but often refers to sung 'spells' of some kind. These include both 'new' poems and chants, and those from parts of the Eddas or from the Old English healing charms, such as the Nine Herbs Charm. Galdr-singers have many different ways to shape or craft their songs, and these may be combined with, for example, seid.

Seidr

Seid (Old Norse: seiðr, sometimes anglicized as "seidhr", "seidh", "seidr", "seithr" or "seith") and Spae (Old Norse: spá) may be seen as forms of "sorcery" or "witchcraft" related to shamanism elsewhere. Seid and/or spae may be constituted as community practices, the best known of which is 'Oracular Seidr', i.e. ritual performed to gain knowledge, in which a seeress or seer, in an altered consciousness, speaks prophecy. Oracular Seidr is constructed differently in the UK, the US and elsewhere. US constructions (often including guided meditation, etc) are more formalised: in the UK, a community seid for knowledge is more likely to be related to contact with Landwights and local deities, with a ritual that is less formally prescribed (see Blain, 2002a). The singing of participants provides energy for the seeing and speaking of the seer, and in some UK practices this singing may be the only ritualised part of proceedings.

Seidr is however a term used for other purposes, including working alone or in company for healing (Blain, 2002b), protection, and for developing links with land and ancestors. It may be related - in past and present - to alterations of consciousness and negotiations with otherworld beings. Many British practitioners see this work as related to indigenous 'shamanic' practices dating back to the Iron and Bronze ages of Northern Europe, and potentially further. Other obvious links for seidr as ‘shamanic’ practice are with Sámi shamanism (Dubois 1999, Price 2002), (the Sámi being the nomadic reindeer-herding people indigenous to the north of Scandinavia and western Russia.)

Various practitioners such as 'Runic John' have recently written about their experiences with Seidr, Runes and Galdr, and the recent book by Johnson and Wallis (2005) explores in detail how one group in the south of England has developed its own ways of working with these techniques and traditions.

References

Blain, Jenny, 2002a. Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism. London: Routledge.

Blain, Jenny, 2002b. 'Magic, healing or death? Issues of seidr, ‘balance” and morality in past and present'. In P. A. Baker and G Carr (eds) Practitioners, Practices and Patients: New Approaches to Medical Archaeology and Anthropology pp 161-171. London: Routledge

Blain, Jenny, 2006. 'Heathenry, the past, and sacred sites in today’s Britain'. In Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives ed. M. Strmiska. ABC-Clio. Available as e-book from http://ebooks.abc-clio.com .

Blain, Jenny and Robert J. Wallis, 2002. 'Contemporary Paganism and Archaeology: Irreconcilable?' Paper given at conference on Archaeology in the Public Domain, Sheffield, 9 March 2002. Online: available http://www.sacredsites.org.uk/papers/aypublic.html .

Dubois, T. 1999 Nordic religions in the Viking Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Harvey, Graham, 2006 (forthcoming) Listening People, Speaking Earth, 2nd Edition.

Hunt-Anschutz, Arlea, 2002 'Heathenry'. In The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism, Ed. S. Rabinovitch and J. Lewis, p. 126-7. New York: Citadel Press.

Johnson, Nathan J. and Robert J. Wallis, 2005. Galdrbok: Practical Heathen Runecraft, Shamanism and Magic. Winchester: Wykeham Press.

Price, Neil. 2002. The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.

External links

Britain

Graham Harvey's discussion of 'Wights and other Persons.'
Webpages authored collectively by the UKHeathenry email list.
Association of Polytheist Traditions, on Polytheism generally and individual polytheisms today
The English Companions - Ða Engliscan Gesiþas - Webpages on Anglo-Saxon language, culture, etc.

Brazil

Aliança da Águia Visigoda América

Mexico

Other sources

BBC Religion and Ethics - Heathen
Heathens Against Hate
Heithni comes from the Old Norse word heiðni.