How to be a Heathen: A Methodology for the Awakening of Traditional Systems « Stephen Flowers/Edred Thorsson via Rune Gild

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His final thought:

Using these methods you can create your own personal religion, of course. But heathendom is in essence a folk religion, it involves a community of people. Individual development is important and essential, but if it is isolated and detached from others, it will not have permanence, and hence will not be as holy as it might have been. Therefore, the next arena of enactment is on the group level. Unless you can make what you arrived at up until now valid for a group of people, all you have done is create a highly personalized system. It is for this reason that organizations are necessary in the applications of these methods. Once the system becomes successful for a whole group of people it can be said to have gained, or regained, a transpersonal validity. This is the end-goal of all reawakened heathen systems. When group-level validity is achieved and maintained it becomes clear that the system is not the clever invention of a single individual, but rather the resonant and true reawakening of something that had been slumbering in the souls of all it touches. It can be said to ring true.

I'm not sure if this is the end goal for me. Part of the appeal to the heathen awareness is the lack of structure and dogma commingled with it and the freedom that affords. When people do try to organize into groups along these lines, I think that this lack of dogma attracts the certain kind of people who would like to make some dogma up in order to tell you how to think and behave.

Rather than try to seek out people interested in being heathens to form a heathen worship community with, I would rather seek out normal people * who I like* to create my community. Our society is pagan enough (without knowing it), that we can have a connection to our ancient heritage without rejecting the connection to the more recent heritage. So it's fairly easy to get along in modern society without a need to convert others -- all it takes to remain heathen in spite of this getting along is to reject the modern dogmas and modern authorities that preach them. The defining moral can be caring about our people. If it is, then even a pious Christian is going to ignore a Pope telling them to always take in more refugees no matter what, or supposed Christian doctrine that states we have to return the (non-Isrealite, modern day) Jews to Israel in order to bring about the rapture.

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His final thought: >Using these methods you can create your own personal religion, of course. But heathendom is in essence a folk religion, it involves a community of people. Individual development is important and essential, but if it is isolated and detached from others, it will not have permanence, and hence will not be as holy as it might have been. Therefore, the next arena of enactment is on the group level. Unless you can make what you arrived at up until now valid for a group of people, all you have done is create a highly personalized system. It is for this reason that organizations are necessary in the applications of these methods. Once the system becomes successful for a whole group of people it can be said to have gained, or regained, a transpersonal validity. This is the end-goal of all reawakened heathen systems. When group-level validity is achieved and maintained it becomes clear that the system is not the clever invention of a single individual, but rather the resonant and true reawakening of something that had been slumbering in the souls of all it touches. It can be said to ring true. I'm not sure if this is the end goal for me. Part of the appeal to the heathen awareness is the lack of structure and dogma commingled with it and the freedom that affords. When people do try to organize into groups along these lines, I think that this lack of dogma attracts the certain kind of people who would like to make some dogma up in order to tell you how to think and behave. Rather than try to seek out people interested in being heathens to form a heathen worship community with, I would rather seek out *normal* people * who I like* to create my community. Our society is pagan enough (without knowing it), that we can have a connection to our ancient heritage without rejecting the connection to the more recent heritage. So it's fairly easy to get along in modern society without a need to convert others -- all it takes to remain heathen in spite of this getting along is to reject the modern dogmas and modern authorities that preach them. The defining moral can be caring about our people. If it is, then even a pious Christian is going to ignore a Pope telling them to always take in more refugees no matter what, or supposed Christian doctrine that states we have to return the (non-Isrealite, modern day) Jews to Israel in order to bring about the rapture.

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