Worshiping Today

So, every so often I watch a YouTube video about Heathenry in one form or another. Often I hear all about how I am doing it wrong and I should be doing it this way or that way. I’m not here to tell you how to do anything, I am here telling you how I do things. I live in the 21st century, I am not a Viking, and I did not live in the 900AD or some other past time. I am here and now.

The way I have structured my religious and spiritual life is around the modern world. Is it historically accurate or the way the “ancestors” did it? No! It’s fucking not! Good luck with that. I don’t have a time machine and I can do all the research in the world an never get in the heads of the people of the past to truly know what they did. As a historian I can tell you we can only guess based on the evidence we have.

Searching for the past and trying to recreate it is a way of escaping reality. I was heavily involved in reenactment, and the reality of that is it is a way to escape the past and relive a romantic viewpoint of the past. That’s all it is. Historical reenactment is not an accurate portrayal of history and trying to reconstruct the ancient ways of Heathenry isn’t real either. It’s a romantic reconstruction of the good old days. Look, I go to punk rock shows now, I went in the 1980s. Its not the same at all. You cannot relive the past.

I have said this before, we need a religious practice for the modern age based upon what we know of past traditions. Wen we do this we establish a religion that is modern and fits with modern people. We don’t get our Heathen holidays off of work or school, and they are not listed on the calendar. I do not use a Lunar calendar or some archaic method of time keeping. I’d be late for work. Therefore we need to adjust Heathenry to fit in the modern world to make it more accessible to everyone.

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