Follow Your Path

Norse-Germanic-Icelandic heathenry is huge! There is no one dogma that is correct or right.

Susie j Folmer 2020

There are no cheat sheets, handy guides, nor easy paths, and I assure you no “bible” type of book to turn to. The Edda’s and old writings give us insights into traditions through stories, belief systems, and oral history and lore that has travelled from generation to generation. A person’s life is determined by fate, established, and tended by the norns at birth and throughout life, and each person is responsible for our own actions and the way in which their wyrd is weaved.

“Dogma: a fixed, especially religious, belief or set of beliefs that people are expected to accept without any doubts”

(Cambridge University Press 2020)

We come from far away to come together as that is the way, and long was. With us we bring our narratives, our own mind’s eye, our own way we lead a life we can be proud of and with that our own life experiences. My experience is going to be unique to me and yours to you. The things that may connect, unify, and bind us. We have a pantheon of gods, goddesses, deities, and entities we look to, learn from, and have faith in. They represent the world, nature, and life in all its forms from love to hate, compassion to deceit and everything in between.

This culture embraces nature, spirituality, lore, myths, and tales; valuing kith and kin, grith and frith. Honour guides us in all things. Some say they “cringe” when we use the word spirituality in describing these ways, and that puzzles me as I do not think there was one linear worldview in the old days. Rather, it was a cyclical life with no beginning and no ending. People’s perceptions were unique to them, their kindred, community and these varied from place to place. Shifting, growing, integrating, adapting, and changing with time.

Everything in nature repeats itself

The moral element meant honour was everything and it was honourable to be magnanimous, witty, wise, kind, resourceful, gentle, faithful, beautiful, healthy, strong, skillful, and brave. Spirituality is found in courage, willpower, inspiration, strength, perseverance, loyalty, kindness, and lore as these are cultural traditions, as are life, death, afterlife, and rebirth. People in times of past core spiritual understanding of the world was centered around the notion of the continuation of life after each death, just as in nature as we are a part of it, not an imposition on it. The cyclical nature of human life connected to nature, and nature providing life sustaining gifts.

For example, it is each person’s choice what symbols they choose to adorn the home and self with and why. A deep understanding of those chosen is integral to the connection to one’s soul. In honouring the self, we are honouring the ancestors and pantheon. There is no regimented way or style, it is free flowing and from my heart. Spirituality is complex to define, and some people resort to a narrow, simplistic notion of it to dismiss it. We cannot constrain it nor dictate it; it has no dogma. To constrain the creative spiritual nature would be to confine and reduce this free-flowing culture, which has existed for thousands of years across time and place.

Written June 2020

© Susie J Folmer, 2020