In a recent episode of David Attenborough’s new BBC series Wild Isles, he spoke of what is being colloquially referred to as the “Wood-Wide Web“, … Learning From The World Around Us
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Anglo-Saxon Heathenry and Roman Polytheism
Posts by Marc
There’s a certain simplicity in dealing with an overgrowth of English ivy. It could more appropriately be called an infestation, even. Untouched, it is a quite pleasant plant to look at – rustic houses residing in a bucolic countryside, be-garlanded with a lattice of evergreen and woody vine-work which inexorably enshrouds the entirety of whatever structure it is anchored upon, in a green embrace. It paints a quite pretty picture, although the reality is often something else entirely. If left unchecked, it proves to be quite the nuisance. Removing such a tenacious and damnable plant is simply done – all one must do is do. Grab one’s gloves and begin, with liberal amounts of elbow grease. Shortcuts exist, of course: herbicides and animal controls…
Categories: Community Thoughts, Conversational, Generalist Paganism, Heathen Theology, Heathenry, Philosophy, Polytheism, Theology, Thoughts
Tagged: action, Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism, Polytheism, Religious practice, Western Polytheism
J. P. F. Wynne’s 2019 monograph Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion: On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination opens its introduction with a with a pointed and cutting sentence: “The Romans did not understand their own religion.” I was browsing through the book, to see if it would be of some indeterminable use in the future for my personal reading and polytheistic musings, and this sentence stopped me in my tracks for a moment. Derived from the situation presented by Marcus Tullius Cicero in Academica 1.9, the sentence is certainly direct and eye catching, befitting an introductory hook. And, yet, instead of simply rolling my eyes and breezing past it, I sat with the thought a moment. The Romans did not…
Categories: ACADEMIC ELITISM!!1+1, Community Thoughts, Conversational, History, Philosophy, Polytheism, Theology, Thoughts
Tagged: Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism, Philosophy, Polytheism, Religion, Theology, Western Polytheism
Just under a week ago, I left New England. I tendered my resignation at work, said “Goodbye” to the life I had known for the past half-decade. At two minutes before two in the morning I loaded what bags I had left in the back of my car and drove with my two very grumpy, very surprised, cats for ten hours. Almost seven hundred miles later, I finally got to a new home. It’s in a new region, with its own local slang, idioms, customs and expectations.It’s in a different growing season, with variable temperatures, rain patterns, and new local geography. So many things are different, more than you would really think to expect when you set out. Time itself is different, despite being…
Categories: Blog Business, Community Thoughts, Conversational, Hearth Cult, Philosophy, Polytheism, Regionalism, Theology, Thoughts
Tagged: Local Cult, Movement, Pagan, Paganism, Polytheism, Religion
Identity formation is an ongoing process – achieved through both interactions with groups of individuals consisting of a common outlook, and through performative actions of rituals throughout life (Khademi-Vidra, 2014). How they form, are applied through the self or from external sources, and how they are integrated has spawned a century-old subfield of sociology, which only briefly will be spoken about here. In the modern world, identity formation and enactment is often stripped from individual and communal spaces, largely through a combination of socio-economic forces that dismantles in order to replace in the service of its own ends – that is, the exploitation of capital (Krawec, 2022). Social spaces and relationships which would otherwise ground and offer foundation to one’s identity are destroyed; in…
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Tagged: Heathen, Heathenry, Identity, Pagan, Paganism, Polytheism, Religion, Religious Identity, Western Polytheism
Originally posted on The Wind's Eye:
Local Gods hold a special place in my particular religion, where I emphasize connection and interdependence. I’ve always been drawn to building relationships with the spirits that surround me, even from a young age when I didn’t explicitly identify as pagan. Going into the woods as a kid, I tried to feel out the spirits of the trees, the living breath of the forest. I craved those immediate, commonplace connections, discovering the hidden holiness around me, and a feeling of intimacy with a place, before I had any interest in petitioning more widespread and historically attested Gods. When I first visited Roanoke six years ago, I was captivated by it. I loved the small but cosmopolitan energy…
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Divine Janus, Two-Faced God of Things that Were and Things Yet To Be, As the Light gives way to the Dark and the Dusk again to the Dawn, Each in turn a new beginning, Bear well Your benevolence on this new turning. Janus Pater Bring forth the Sun, You who begins each year, fleeting, through renewal of that which came before, be gracious and merciful, Open new doors and reveal new vistas. Janus, God of Gods, Father of Gods, Gatekeeper, Beginner, Creator, Source of Years, Provide peace upon us.
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I just read an amazing quote that sums up my feelings on so much: “You cannot eat theory.” This goes for leftists, polytheists, environmentalists, for damned near anything. You cannot FUCKING eat theory. If your response to someone struggling is to say ‘read theory x’ or ‘read this book/book list’ you are lost. A popular […] You Cannot Eat Theory
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Clear orbs of light from the natural beeswax tapers flicker in the dark of the room, the flames dancing and forcing the shadows to write along the walls and the corner that the table is set against. It is as if this shrine, this holy space to my ancestors and dead, was a sentinel in that darkness, guarding and bolstering against it even if it is, in reality, simply in one spare bedroom of my apartment overlooking a busy road in Rhode Island. I always offer sacrifice and prayers at night, at least on holidays that are in observance to the Infernal Gods and the Dead. My space is adorned with memories and offerings: images of the dead, flowers (violets, to be precise, if…
Categories: Ancestors, Anglo-Saxon, Community Thoughts, Conversational, Fyrnsidu, Germanic, Hearth Cult, Heathen Theology, Heathenry, It me, Super Fun Holiday Things, Theology, Thoughts
Tagged: Ancestors, Anglo-Saxon Heathen, Fyrnsidere, Fyrnsidu, Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism
Insularity and the Other, On Being a Heathen “Citizen of the World”
Marc
Posted on September 9, 2020
It should surprise no one that Heathenry and its associated, yet nascent, theology breeds insularity. Many reconstructionist attempts at understanding pre-Christian Germanic religion have fixated, falsely I feel, on the concept of a smaller tribal nucleus as an attempt to organize their worldview and establish an identity within and beneath the wider Western culture. While in-groups and out-groups exist in all walks of life and all social situations, Heathenry’s efforts are ultimately derived from the dated scholarship of Vilhelm Grønbech, and other contemporaneous scholars of his time, further inspired by romanticist movements, and taken to almost fanatical levels of dogma among many disparate groups of Heathens. The Inner-Outer dichotomy, a feature of Heathen social and religious positioning, is admittedly under-attested in the majority of…
Categories: ACADEMIC ELITISM!!1+1, Community Thoughts, Conversational, Fyrnsidu, Generalist Paganism, Germanic, Heathen Theology, Heathenry, Larhus, Northern Tradition, Not-Quite-Northern, Philosophy, Polytheism, Theology, Thoughts
Tagged: Anglo-Saxon, Cosmology, Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism, Philosophy, Religion, Theology
Of Axe and Plough 