Found at the Gothenburg Museum of World Culture

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Knowing Freya. Part 13: Freya and modern Heathens

The world of today is incredibly different to what it was when the worship of the Norse Deities was the main religion in Iceland and Scandinavia. The culture, the language, the values and technology have changed to the point that a Viking Age heathen would feel utterly lost if they somehow found themselves in our

Book recommendation: ‘Darśan. Seeing the Divine Image in India’ by Diana L. Eck

One of the most difficult things for many westerners to understand about Hinduism is its relation to and worship of images. Because we grow up under monotheist and Abrahamic hegemony, we are often influenced – whether or not we are actually religious – by its views. And in the Abrahamic traditions, the worship of images

Knowing Freya, part 12: Freya and Ragnarök

Ragnarök, Old Norse for ‘the Doom of the Gods’. Undoubtedly the most famous event described in Norse mythology. Even people who know close to nothing about Norse Polytheism have heard about this great apocalypse. Described primarily in the Eddic poem Völuspa, Ragnarök is a series of cataclysmic events that leads to the death of many

Knowing Freya. Part 11: Seid

To the ancient Norse people and to many modern Heathens, the whole world was and is alive. There is nowhere where Consciousness is not. The trees, the stones, rivers, mountains and even human-made objects have soul. The veil between the physical world and the spirit world is thin, if not non-existent. And for many Heathens,

Knowing Freya, part 10: Gullveig

One of the most important events described in Norse myth is the Æsir-Vanir war, a conflict between the divine tribes which resulted in the unification of the two into a single pantheon. There are a number of theories about the meaning of this war. Some historians believe it is a allegory for the conflict between

The need for trans separatistic spiritual spaces

TW: transphobia, transmisogyny, castration I’ve been thinking a lot about the galli lately. Partly because I’ve read this book about the Mother Goddess Cybele and partly because I’ve had a few run-ins with transphobes in Pagan spaces. The galli, if you’ve never heard of them, were a class of priest/priestesses who worshipped Cybele. They were

Since we’re on the topic of weaving…

I came across this and was reminded how we are all co-weavers of She Who Weaves Existence: May She bless us all with good thread. The book is ‘The Monk Within: Embracing a Sacred Way of Life’ by Beverly Lanzetta.

Knowing Freya. Part 6: Animals

The old Norse religion, as well as much of modern Heathenry, could be quite accurately described as shamanistic. As such, it shares many components that are common in shamanistic spirituality. One of these is the belief in guiding animal spirits and power animals. The fylja, for example, is a personal guiding spirit which takes the