Drawing Down the Moon (48 page)

As with Pagans from all cultures, people attracted to Scandinavian and Germanic forms of Paganism often come to it as part of a search for their own ancestral roots. Alice Karlsdóttir told me, “My family is Scandinavian, and as I was growing up, my mother read me the Norse myths, and they remained my favorite ones.” After attending an extremely conservative Christian college in Texas, Karlsdóttir decided she was not a Christian. She studied different religions, became interested in the occult, and, through a poetry teacher, began learning about Paganism. “The minute I realized Paganism was the religion for me, and that it was OK, and not weird, I
immediately
went back to the Norse gods, which had been in the back of my head all this time. There was never a question. I just knew. I thought, ‘I can really believe in these guys again!' Perhaps it was the way I was raised, or perhaps I just had these images in my head.”

When I revised
Drawing Down the Moon
in 1986, the largest and most successful organization promoting Norse Paganism in the United States was the Ásatrú Free Assembly (AFA), which was started by Stephen McNallen in 1971. It later changed its name to the Ásatrú Folk Assembly. “I had wandered out of high school in rural Texas,” McNallen told me, “and had shaken off Catholicism because it conflicted with my basic instincts. I sampled many religions, read about Wicca, looked into Crowley, but none of it clicked. Then I ran across a novel about the Vikings. In retrospect, it wasn't a great novel, but the Vikings, in contrast with the monks, were real; they were alive. They had all the intensity and courage. It was clicking into something I already believed, but it was still awhile until I became aware that you can choose your gods.”

McNallen said that many of the main Odinist groups (the Odinist Fellowship, the Odinist Committee in England, Ásatrúarfolks in Iceland, and the AFA) started within a very few months of each other, with no knowledge of each other's existence. Perhaps it was “a wind blowing through the World Tree,” he said. The AFA published
The Runestone,
a quarterly journal, as well as assorted books and tapes on the religion, mythology, rituals, and values of Ásatrú. Every year the AFA holds an annual three-day festival called the Althing. Held in a rural setting, there are rituals, fellowship, music, and feasting. The AFA also created a system of guilds to encourage fellowship and the sharing of skills: the artists' guild; the brewing guild; the warrior guild; the computer/shamanism guild; the writers' guild; the sewing guild; even the aerospace technology guild.

Many people involved in Northern European Paganism use the word Asatru to describe themselves. Ásatrú means “belief in the gods” in Old Norse, or, more correctly, loyalty to the Aesir—one of the two races or groups of gods in Norse mythology. The other group is the Vanir. The Aesir consists of gods many people will find familiar: Odin, who is often seen as the high god, a kind of All Father principle; his wife, Frigga; his son Thor; Tyr; Balder; and many others. The Aesir, in Scandinavian myths are a race of sky gods. They are generally the more aggressive and outgoing, the movers and shakers. The Vanir consist of the gods of the earth, of agriculture, fertility, and death. The most well known are Frey and Freya, and there are some people involved in Norse Paganism who have concentrated on the Vanir. The Vanir also include Nerthus and Njord. The myths tell of a time way in the past when the Aesir and the Vanir warred. Later, the two pantheons merged. Most people involved in Heathenism are very polytheistic, preferring to honor all the gods, Aesir and Vanir.

On one level the gods are examples and models—inspirations, self-aware personifications of the forces of nature. On another level, McNallen says, “they are a numinous logic-defying reality, something apprehended only by means of symbols, something that speaks to us on deeper levels where words are inadequate. Studying the Gods, we can all add richness and power to our religious lives by tapping this ancient, non-verbal wisdom.”

In a pamphlet titled “What is Ásatrú,” McNallen describes the spiritual beliefs of Asatru as:

The gods are honored in daily rituals, and there are seasonal celebrations on the solstices and equinoxes and other ancient festival days. Some have told me that rituals are often sparser than those in Wicca. There are some groups that do circle rituals, using different symbols for the elements—perhaps a sickle or cakes for North, a spear or rune wand for East, a sword for South, a horn for the West. Many groups do not find the circle form of ritual appropriate. Some groups celebrate six of the eight traditional Pagan sabbats, having a six-spoked wheel of the year, rather than the eight of many Pagan traditions.

When I revised
Drawing Down the Moon
in 1986, most people involved with Heathenism would carefully distinguish themselves from other forms of Neo-Paganism, and only a few of them interacted with the larger Pagan community, went to festivals, or engaged in ecumenical activities. Part of this was because they did not see themselves in any way as part of a universal movement; in fact most Heathens do not believe in universal religions. Stephen McNallen has written that the various branches of humanity have different ways of looking at the world and that this is natural. McNallen wrote to me:

This is where it got complicated and problematic. Many of the Heathens I spoke with in the 1980s and much of the literature I read put a heavy emphasis not only on ancestry but on a belief in the primacy of genetics, as well as a belief that certain aspects of the soul are transmitted down the family line, that reincarnation comes within race, tribe, and family. In looking at the Jungian idea of archetypes, several articles in
The Runestone
observed that Jung's original idea was that these archetypes were not culturally transmitted but inherited genetically. Today, Heathen thought on these issues is much more diverse, but at that time, one member of the AFA told me, “We are not racists, but we are racially aware. I look at my children's red hair and freckles and think how many generations it took for them to get that way. I want them to be the same color as me.” To which I refrained from replying, “Suppose it was just a random mutation?” A woman in AFA told me that she had never had a black person apply to be in her group, but she would wonder why they weren't interested in “their own religious roots.” This was completely at odds with, for example, Isaac Bonewits's Druid group. “Most of the black people in the group have more Celtic blood than I do,” he observed. Speaking personally, if religious impulses and archetypes are transmitted genetically, I would never have been influenced by Athena and Artemis, and this book would never have been written. As David James, also a member of the AFA, once observed to me, “It's rather funny, there are a whole bunch of Jews in the Celtic groups and a whole bunch of us Celts in the Norse groups.”

Despite observations like these, members of the AFA told me that duty to one's ancestors and kin is a holy duty that comes first. Blood
is
thicker than water. “This way of looking at things is contrary to the dogma of this day,” McNallen observed, but he contended, “We know in our hearts . . . Ancestry is better than schemes which would deny these truths and propose a formless, alienated and unnatural universalism.”
⁴⁶

In talking about Ásatrú as a very ancestral religion, with bonds that are genetic, “even paragenetic,” McNallen conceded that “it can easily be misinterpreted.” “How do you prevent misinterpretations?” I asked. Partly by explaining over and over again, he said. “We used to get people who thought we were out to save the white race. But we are not for putting anyone down. We are simply for the spirituality of our own people. This is a real religion. It is not a front for any political group.” McNallen says that while a lot of Heathens in the past were attracted for political and cultural reasons, a real religious development had been taking place with interest in magic, ritual, and runes.

But while the AFA stressed the religious aspects of Norse Paganism and downplayed the political, when I was originally writing about Heathenism, some Odinist organizations had a different view. The Odinist Fellowship, for example, devoted much of its journal,
The Odinist,
to political and philosophical articles on subjects ranging from attacks on liberalism to a defense of the original goals of apartheid. Instead of avoiding these political discussions, the Odinist Fellowship met them head on. It was frankly racist, although they would have probably preferred the term “racialist.” One article had these words: “The most distinguishable feature of Odinism is that for the first time a religion has declared itself founded upon the concept of race, with its correlation to culture and civilization. Without race there is nothing; therefore our first duty is a study of race and the significance of Aryan people to world history.”
⁴⁷
As you will see, this kind of language is in no way typical of most Heathen groups today.

There do remain differences between Neo-Pagans and Heathens in regard to beliefs about ancestry, politics, and race; there are also some differences in values. A leaflet describing the values of the AFA lists them as follows:

At the time I wrote this chapter, Heathenism did attract people who were more politically conservative than the majority of Neo-Pagans. They were uncomfortable with feminism, anarchism, and diversity in sexuality and life style. Of course, there were also conservatives in the general Neo-Pagan community. But all in all, there was less vegetarianism and more alcohol as opposed to other mind-altering methods. There was a stress on martial arts and on warrior values. (The Vikings are seen as freedom fighters, not robbers.) The AFA has, in the past, advertised in
Soldier of Fortune.
McNallen disagreed with my label “conservatism,” saying that modern society didn't have much to conserve. “We are seeing the decline of the West,” he said, “we are living in the ruins.” Still, as Ariel Bentley, a woman in the AFA, put it to me, “I'm no longer a bleeding heart liberal,” and Alice Karlsdóttir said, “There's stress on independence, courage, on not being pacifistic. The idea that life is a struggle and that's fun, so go out and
do
it. It's definitely not a meditative religion.” I asked her if she agreed with those ideas, and she said: “If someone came for me in an alley, I'd rather wipe 'em out, than rehabilitate them. In the '60s it was uncool to have those thoughts and I repressed them. But I realized I was lying to myself.”

As for Heathen gatherings, Ariel Bentley described workshops, presentations by the guilds, rituals, feasting, songs around the campfire, and a sumbel—a Germanic ritual in which a drinking horn filled with mead is passed around and each person toasts, recites a poem or song. It is a place where the psychic storehouse of a group can be brought into the present. “There were songs, stories, prayers, bragging and boasting.” “Bragging and boasting?” I queried. “Yes,” she said. “Bragi is the god of poetry. All my life,” she said, “I was trained not to blow my own horn. But in Ásatrú, it is considered fine, a way of linking oneself to one's ancestors.”

Like most Neo-Pagans, most Heathens do not believe in sin and regard guilt as a destructive rather than useful concept. In an article called “Joy is better than Guilt,” McNallen writes that guilt is a tool for forging a brave new world, filled with docile, interchangeable units. In Ásatrú, the gods inspire one to a different view.

While Heathens tend to be more conservative than most Neo-Pagans, their religion puts them at odds with the mainstream conservative culture. Stephen McNallen has written that the religion of Ásatrú is under assault by Christian fundamentalists. “After a period of religious tolerance that has lulled us for several decades—a tolerance that has protected both the best and worst in American behavior—it is apparent that we are entering a time when we of Ásatrú are going to meet greater and greater resistance from the powers that rule this country.” McNallen notes that there is some irony in this situation, because “Many of the values championed by those who would oppress us are values with which we can readily identify, such as a strengthened family, less bureaucratic intervention in the life of the individual, and the rest. Unfortunately,” he adds, “it was the followers of the pale Galilean who coopted the movement back to traditional values more in keeping with those of our Folk—and we, who follow the gods that hallowed those values, stand to be crushed, if the new inquisitors have their way.”
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