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If you are blind or visually impaired, or just prefer audiobooks to print or ebooks, there are links at the end of this post for your use. I have a limited number of free codes for the audiobook of my new book Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path, and I would like to give them to readers of my blog who are blind. I am also giving these codes to the blind in my forum, the Asatru Facebook Forum, and on my social media. These codes will all be gone after this month, August 2020.

Here is a link to my new book on Audible. Right now Audible is giving away free copies of my book when you sign up for a 30 day trial of Audible.

On August 1, book launch day for Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path, I hosted an online book launch party on my social media instead of having an in-person book launch event. People posted some questions to my social media. Here's an unroll of questions and answers from the event.

Question:
What changed for you, from the beginning to the end of writing this book? How did writing this book change you?

Today is the day my book goes live! Preorders of the print edition have already been shipping, but August 1st 2020 is my new book's official launch day, so today the ebook edition should be available to download, and print editions should be available in bookstores.

Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path is the longer, updated version of my out of print classic Asatru For Beginners. The new edition includes recent history in the history chapter, has an expanded section on the gods, includes new scholarship made since the original version of the book first started being sold as an ebook around the turn of the millenium, and includes the new modernist movement in Asatru, covering the differences between traditionalist and modernist Asatru, especially with regards to morals and magic.

This essay was prompted by a "TERF" (="Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminist") statement made in my local pagan community. TERFs usually reference biological determinism, defining being a woman as being fertile and giving birth, which excludes women like me, a "cis" (="not transgender") woman who has never been fertile, and is now in the crone stage of life. Sometimes their biological definitions reference having a womb, which would also exclude women like my mom, who had hers removed right after having me.

(I don't usually use the term "cis" because of its origins in academic papers meant as a substitute for "the normal population" or "the control group" and thus it is inherently binarist. Plus, as a binarist word, it has been used to exclude non-binary people, and has been used as a slur against non-binary people. It is the most appropriate word to use in this particular instance, however, using it strictly to mean "not trans.")

Tyr is the original skyfather in heathen mythology. His major sphere of influence is justice. Zisa is his wife. Her symbol is the war boat, and she was identified by Tacitus as being the same goddess as Isis.

The Fireverse uses the names of gods as recorded in the Icelandic / Norse sources, unless the name is not recorded there. In the Icelandic, the name of Tyr's wife is not written down. However, Tyr is the same god as Ziu, and Ziu's wife's name is Zisa, so in both my novel Some Say Fire and in my personal practice I call them Tyr and Zisa.

In the Lore, which is what we heathens call the body of literature collectively chosen by the heathen community as our canon, Hodur is either Baldur's brother or his human rival for Nanna or both.  In the story in which Hodur and Baldur vie for the affections of Nanna, which ends with Baldur both winning the girl and getting killed, there are three basic versions in the lore. The lore has two stories in which Hodur and Baldur are brothers and a different story in which Hodur is a human warrior. In only one of these stories is Loki even a character in the story. In the non-Loki stories, Hodur and Baldur fight with swords. In the story with Loki, Baldur dies in a mock sacrifice that turns into a real one when weapons that can’t hurt him are hurled at him but one of them is magically turned into a lethal weapon. This weapon is made of mistletoe, the only substance which his mother has not made to promise not to hurt him—she made everything else promise because of a prophetic dream he had. This story is in one way a story about self fulfilling prophecy, and in another way about the nature of a sacrificed god who is also prophesied to rise again as king in the next universe.

Now, the novel gnosis: The reason Frigga did not bother asking mistletoe not to harm Baldur is because mistletoe was his own sacred plant. She must have not it wasn’t necessary to ask. But of course that is what also makes it perfect for a sacrificial ritual. Mistletoe is a liminal plant, neither of earth nor of air but partaking of both. It blooms and produces berries but they are poisonous. It grows without roots, and is green in the winter when its host tree is dormant. It’s a bundle of paradoxes, which is what makes it sacred. That is Baldur’s symbol when he is alive. But after his death, his symbol is the ox-eye daisy.  Daisies in general are also a symbol of the dead.

Fenris the wolf is the son of Loki and Angrboda. In the Lore he is prophesied to help destroy the world at Ragnarok, so the gods bind him.

Fireverse Fenris and Jormungandr have beast shapes because Loki is a shape shifter. In the Fireverse, Odin is aware of the prophecy about Fenris, and that is the main reason he gives Fenris to Tyr and Zisa to raise, to try to keep Fenris under control. Zisa already has an affinity for dogs because Fireverse Zisa is the same goddess as Nehallenia. Tyr and Zisa raise Fenris in their home as their foster son. It is a great tragedy when the gods decide Fenris has gotten too big—in the way that Ymir got too big, so that allowing him to keep growing would mean he would eventually eat the whole universe—and they decided to bind Fenris. The main person behind the decision to act when they did was Odin. Fenris regards his binding as a betrayal by his father figure Tyr. Fenris still loves Zisa but he is permanently mad at Tyr. Zisa still feeds Fenris; she catches fish in her nets in her fishing boat (she no longer sails her war boat) and brings them to his island where he is bound and she dumps her nets out on the beach, where he can just reach them.