Devoured by Flame

This might make a few people mad but what doesn’t these days?

Suffice to say, I cannot stand reconstructionist ideas in polytheism but I can only speak for Norse polytheism. I cannot speak for Greek or Celtic – though I suspect Celtic is the same way – but as a former heathen it just grinds my gears.

One thing that I cannot identify with is the cultural aspect of what heathens may have been before Christians took over and what they are now. These two things cannot be seen as equals whatsoever. We cannot go back in time and reproduce a culture that was back then because we know nothing about how the Gods were worshiped, what standards They were held to, much less how relatable They were at the time. 

We are not from the time before Christianity spread over Scandinavia. And the majority I’m speaking to are American much less Scandinavian. Any historical analysis of what might have happened in the halls of the ancient polytheists and how they honored their Gods is not at all what it’s going to be like in this modern era, much less this very Western-influenced, late capitalist era where Christians are still the ones calling the shots and pagans are still floundering trying to find answers to something they know little about. 

We have no context for polytheism whatsoever in our culture. We hardly even have anything remotely pluralist, anyway. We have nothing to replicate, no practice to go off of, and no understanding that isn’t at least somewhat Christian. And yet, we try to go back to the way things were before all of this if only because there is no other way.

Most heathens are often hyper-masculine fans of a time that never even existed. They dress in tunics and frocks and other garments that have no meaning to them today. They gather in a circle and solemnly toast the Gods whose presence has gone unseen to them. They know vaguely the concept of worship but do not offer these things to the Gods, and more so as a way of performing ritual for people who seem to want something besides Wicca. Any practice outside of their theorized performance is going to have their head chopped on the chopping block for trying to be some other way similar to how Christians get with their Bible. 

I only say this because I thought I would be a heathen for a good four years. To be fair, the entire time I was wondering where the Gods were. I knew how the presence of the Gods felt, as I felt it in my shrine room, as I prayed constantly and practiced and offered to Them. I knew the distinct energy signatures of each Deity and knew what it felt like when They were around and yet each time I went to blót with my kindred, They were nowhere to be found.

And so who were they making the offering to if the Gods were not there? Their egos? Because that’s the only thing I can think of.  I wish I could go back in time and smack myself and say that my discernment wasn’t wonky and the Gods I loved were not receiving the offerings I thought They were. 

There’s a lot of other things this kindred had going for it that just really creeped me out but this is the basis for my complaints. The thing was, even, they welcomed Loki which was unpopular for the time. Though Loki is becoming more and more welcomed among heathens that allege inclusivity (while hosting events in states where trans, women, and queer rights are held in question), it still isn’t seemingly welcoming to Him. They tolerate Him up until the point of Ragnarok. They then try to refine that by saying Ragnarok was mostly Christian when it was a thing that happened within the mythology for millennia before Sturlusson came into the picture. 

That alone is a Christian way of thinking. If we cannot argue that Ragnarok is based in concepts that are echoed back in truth about how cycles are built and then end, then we cannot get past our own western ideals and we cannot meet Loki where He is. I don’t care how controversial He is, He was a God most worshiped with the Aesir. We know little about that because of how it was destroyed and that can be said for most of the Gods the Christians came after harder than others. 

Loki never attended the blots we hosted for Him in this kindred. And I never understood why and my best explanation that didn’t question my choices was that he didn’t like ritual. However, my new understanding is that He actually does like ritual, but ritual is not the same as the ritual we think about now. 

Ritual was not these solemn affairs where people stand in a circle and toast one another as well as the Gods while keeping the Gods far from the circle. It was almost like the Gods didn’t want their offerings being made in a way that wasn’t meaningful for the humans making the offering. 

It’s like heathenry is trying to translate a dead language without the language framework so they can try to ring the right phone number of the very specific Gods. And then once they get on the phone with the Gods, They can’t understand what the humans are going on about because it makes no sense for this to be happening anymore. Not to mention the rituals they are doing have no emotional, societal, or ecological meaning to them and are extremely performative. 

It’s skin deep and basic. And the worst part is, any kindred that I’ve come across has the same stupid philosophy. They use the Gods like trading cards or Pokémon. They employ Their usage when it best suits them instead of building a bridge between the Gods and us. They don’t even think of asking the Gods what kinds of things would be needed and writing it off as UPG when it gets too hard to reconcile that with a meager understanding of the past. 

We can grieve all we want that we will never truly know what it took to reach the Gods. But if we truly believe the Gods are out there today and teaching us and spending time with us, giving us answers directly in ecstatic rituals, why have we not asked Them if we are even honoring Them properly? Are we really that blind that we never even thought of questioning how we’ve been doing things and why the Gods weren’t even there? 

These reasons were what sparked my distancing from all things heathen and the community I was in. There were some other ethical issues I found hidden within the framework of the organization that I’ll get into another time, but mostly the problem was that they kept the Gods too far from the rituals they claimed to worship and honor Them in.

It was depressing, to be fair. I didn’t want to be alone, but given my marriage vows to Loki and the fact that I was deep in my devotion to Him, I saw no other choice than to be alone. I knew I was following the right path from the moment I said goodbye to them if only because the presence of Loki grew tenfold. Not only could I sense Loki’s presence, but I now could see why the other Gods weren’t coming around before then as each of Them resonated with me that much better. 

I wanted so badly to belong with people. Wicca is not an option, neither were Druids though I do enjoy their egalitarian approach, and then other heathen and reconstructionist groups had even worse problems than the kindred I left. There were some edgelord groups who claimed to walk a similar path but had even more problems than the reconstructionists did ethically, morally, spiritually and otherwise.  Modern conceptions of witchcraft just don’t do it for me after what I’ve seen with my two eyes and the experiences I’ve had. So there’s nowhere else for me to turn than to forge my own path. Which was mostly the case for why I made this blog, because I saw no other option in where to go from here and I didn’t want to be alone. 

I don’t even know what it’ll look like at the end. In my opinion, I am doing heathenry, just not the heathenry that we know about anymore. The version of heathenry we think we are trying to forge is dead and is riddled with anti-semitism, racism, bigotry, and Christian-flavored rule books. They strayed so far away from looking like Christians that they only managed to create a circle.

The opposite of Christianity isn’t basing things off of the victorious. It is going our own way and asking the Gods how They feel about things instead of being so hellbent on finding academic articles about why things are the way they are.

In my experiences thus far, whatever knowledge I have found to be true from the Gods has been historically backed and not because it’s confirming my bias but because I am only led to the resources after I have figured out the meaning of the information I found. Though it is not an exact replica of the academic papers and the theories that we have based on them, it looks similar to things we find in other parts of the world and how they go about worshiping and honoring the Gods uniquely. The ideas are universal though the pantheon is not. 

I want to go where the Gods are, not where people think we should put the Gods. And maybe other people would agree with me. This isn’t to say we should pull things out of our ass and call it “good” because then we will be making even more mistakes. That’s far from where I’m going with this. I’m building a framework that’s balanced between my experiences as well as the history before all of this, regardless of what’s popular or cool or seemingly reasonable. I am a priestess of Loki, what can I say? I don’t do comfortable.