Gnosis Diary: Life as a Heathen

My personal experiences, including religious and spiritual experiences, community interaction, general heathenry, and modern life on my heathen path, which is Asatru.

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Erin Lale

Erin Lale

Erin Lale is the author of Asatru For Beginners, and the updated, longer version of her book, Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path. Erin has been a gythia since 1989. She was the editor and publisher of Berserkrgangr Magazine, and is admin/ owner of the Asatru Facebook Forum. She also writes science fiction and poetry, ran for public office, is a dyer and fiber artist, was acquisitions editor at a small press, and founded the Heathen Visibility Project.

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The Rainbow on the Book and other stories

What a magical thing a book is. Someone spends years slowly composing their thoughts, writing and rewriting every word over and over until it's their best work. Someone else polishes it, and someone else makes art to sandwich all the words together, and finally you open it and behold! There are markings, and they speak into your mind, and the words flow to you and you hear the thoughts of the author. Over time, over space, sometimes translated into new languages, or even beyond death, you hear another's thoughts and words.

To write, to read, to even just pick up a book and look at it is to honor the god of writing, Odin. Odin, who won the Runes on the Tree, in his act of shamanic self-sacrifice. Odin, who spoke his own words to human writers and poets to be written in the Havamal, the Sayings of the High One: "I know that I hung on the windy tree, nine long nights, without food or drink, I looked down, I took up the runes, screaming I took them, I fell back from there."

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Wish Cat and the snowfall

About a week after my housemate wished for her own cat, this cat appeared. When I first saw him he was on the front walkway, and I snapped this photo thinking he would probably walk away after that. Nope. He walked right into the house and made himself at home. 

This is amazing because my cat Happy usually runs off any other cats that enter his territory. He usually hides from strange people and dogs, too. Anything rat-sized is dinner, of course. But Happy tolerated this new cat. He only got hissy when the new cat jumped up on the bed where Happy and I were sleeping. Otherwise he was remarkably laid-back about the whole other cat thing. It's like magic. It IS magic. Freya magic.

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In Part 3, I talk about the story of the Wall Street Bull and its blocking and unblocking. How did I see a news story that was no longer there when I looked again? Perhaps the universe supplied it so I would be inspired to honor the Bull. 

The story of the Wall Street Bull and its blocking by an opposing statue goes like this, according search engine research. The Bull was sculpted after an 80s era stock market crash, to encourage the economy to recover. It was always intended as a symbol of prosperity, and specifically of recovery after a period of less prosperity. 

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Part 2 of this 3 part series deals with the Bear symbol in the Bull and Bear pair which are the patron spirits of Wall Street and by extension the national and global economy. 

Bears are still important in Asatru and other Heathen religions and in my personal practice. The ancient art of Bersarkrgangr is named after the Bear spirit, as it was the most common fylgia, or spirit skin, of historical Bersarkrs. My personal Bear spirit is a guardian spirit as well as a being that I can embody through the art of Bersarkrgangr. I honor my Bear ang gift him with honey. I see him in my mind’s eye as both inhabiting his own realm which is a bear paradise with trees full of wild honey hives and a river full of salmon and a soft place to rest, and also continuously within and around me as my fylgia and guardian against bad entities.

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Honor the Bull part 1

Recently a news story crossed my social media feed saying New York just removed a blockage against the prosperity of the nation and the world. The economy has been bad since the blockage appeared, but hopefully the bull will charge ahead now and everything will be better for everyone.

When I searched for the story later I could not find any recent news confirming this. The story turned out to be a little more complicated, but more on that later. First, let’s talk about the Bull and Bear symbols.

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Heathen Visibility Project 2022 in Review
The Heathen Visibility Project seeks to fill search engine space with free images of Asatru and Heathen subjects for the use of journalists and others. We want to see accurate, positive portrayals of actual religious Asatru people, gatherings, etc., rather than hate groups or fictional characters, illustrating articles about Asatru and Heathenry. This post is about new developments in 2022. For info on "How To" use the images or participate in the project, please see the linked posts at the bottom.
 
Project photos and videos created
 
In January 2022, for the first time since just before Tom died in 2020, I made a video on my Heathen Visibility youtube channel. It's not scripted or styled or anything but it does have a cute cat in it. https://youtu.be/Bz5RVLBGm64

In August, as a result of a plan created with a magazine editor about advertising my book, I did a photoshoot with my book. Since the ad was for a magazine, I was going for an editorial look. I chose to dress as a modern, sophisticated city heathen rather than appear in ritual robes or in the historical garb which is common in images of Asatru and heathenry. Since I only needed one of the photos for the ad, I selected some of the others for use in the Heathen Visibility Project. (See my post Freya Glamor on how I achieved my look for the photoshoot to see one of the photos. A different one of the photos from that shoot is included in this post.)
 
In September, Amanda planned and led Haustblot for our kindred. Amanda is the first gythia I trained. Haustblot is an autumn seasonal and harvest ritual. Just before the ritual started, Amanda, I, and some of the ritual participants posed for a Heathen Visibility Project photo. (See my post Haustblot and Other Rituals to see the photo.)
 
In December, my cat Happy decided I needed to do a rune cat photoshoot as I was getting ready for a Yule ritual. The resultant photo is in my Heathen Visibility Project gallery on Deviantart, here: Rune Cat by erinlale on DeviantArt 
 
Search Engine Results
 
The Project is getting results. As a test, I searched terms related to the Project on the internet. I did a search on various Project related terms on Bing, because it's the search engine default from a popular browser. The top search results for the terms heathen, Asatru, #heathenvisibility and Heathen Visibility Project all return first page results that do not contain any racist or neonazi images. The first page results for these terms still contain a lot of fictional character images but none of them were Marvel. That's huge progress. The top nonfiction links for the terms #heathenvisibility and Heathen Visibility Project go to blog entries here on Pagansquare about the project. The top nonfiction links for the terms Heathen and Asatru go to various wiki and dictionary definitions and to religious websites or forums. This is excellent progress from where we were when we started. 
 
News Coverage
 
There has not been very much news coverage of Asatru and related topics this year. However, Asatru was mentioned briefly in an article on a major news site about Asian religions using swastikas. MSN (Microsoft Network, official news aggregator site of Microsoft the software company) ran an AP (Associated Press) article on modern issues about the Swastika. While the focus is on Asian religions, the article also mentions other symbols appropriated by hate groups and the struggle to keep such symbols available for religious use, including the Thor's Hammer. 
 
Link to the article:
 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/asian-faiths-try-to-save-swastika-symbol-corrupted-by-hitler/ar-AA14BZ3y?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=560920e6818047ea96028e06b8065f3b&fbclid=IwAR0jTrQEpotol8kvlUhu8ozWWA6KkLAHYam0fO23QXWAjWZkygLIv9wND2A 

Heathen Visibility Project "How To" Links:

Resources for Editorial Use:
https://witchesandpagans.com/heathen-visibility-project-resources-for-editorial-use.html 
 
How to Create and Share Images:
https://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-paths-blogs/gnosis-diary/heathen-visibility-project-how-to.html  
 
Image: Erin Lale with her book. Erin is wearing modern dress and Asatru jewelry including a Thor's Hammer, standing on a city street in front of a mural of a cityscape. She is holding her book Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path. Photo by Jim Connor for the Heathen Visibility Project. This photo is free to use for editorial purposes. 

 
 
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Like tides, lives have high and low times. Sometimes you're riding on top of the wave, sometimes you're impossibly riding inside the tube of the wave and it is so cool and amazing, but sometimes you're in the trough. You can stand up and yell "Make wave!" or just wait it out and it's coming around the same either way.

If you're feeling low, and feeling like you aren't doing enough with your religious and magical practice, this advice is for you. 

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