Hammerhof

Well folks, it’s been a minute. That’s right, I haven’t done shit in about a year. Why you ask? Because I just did not have the time. Well, now something has motivated me to write. TH Satanist are back! Her in small town America where we have more churches than people to fill them the local chapter of the Satanic church has started a group at the local elementary school to combat the Christian group that meets there now. You guessed it, the villagers have their panties in a twist. Here’s the thing about Satan, you can’t have Satan without the Christians and their god. Satan comes from the bible and only the bible. Satan is part of the Christian religion and thus just another sect of said religion. The Churches were full and all a buzz about these Satanists who are going to steal our children and have human sacrifices or some shit. They are going to have a prayer rally and pray for their souls or some garbage. I get this information from my wife by the way. They want me to have symp...

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 21 st 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 ...

 So, Yule and Christmas have come and gone. Here in our home, we celebrate both because me and my biologicals are Heathen, and my wife and her biologicals are Christian. Our tradition is to celebrate Yule on the Solstice from sundown on the 19 th to sundown on the 22 nd of December. I understand that some celebrate the Medieval tradition of the 12-Days of Yule, and other use the Lunar method and Yule will be January 6 th for you. For us Yule fell during the wee and we had work, school, afterschool activities, and daily life to contend with. This makes Yule a trying time to prepare for and to celebrate. In contrast Christmas fell on a weekend and most people get the time off from work and it makes things all nice and neat. Yule came and went with some difficulties and life went on. Then on the 23 rd of December I was sick and tested positive for Covid. Yeah me! That only kept me down a day. By the 24 th I was doing. However, we could not go to see my wife’s family due to the ...

TO I watched this video ( The Future of Heathenry and the Field of Dreams - YouTube ) and I first I was a bit hurt. In the first few moments of the video, he speaks about private property temples and communities, what he calls the field of dreams concept. Basically, this is the idea of building a private property Hof and then building a community around it. Sort of something I have thought of doing. He goes on to talk about the current state, nature, of modern heathen communities. on these issues I agree. Watch the video, then come back. In the past I have written about this and said that if I build it when you come? I have also spoken about community building, the big nationals or "umbrella groups", and I written about solitary practice. Over the decades I have been involved in Heathenry I have gone back and forth between solitary and communal in my practice. I have also gone back and forth on if community building is really all that great at all. I have also said, act local...

Dæggehwilc sidu is Old English for a daily custom or ritual. I have had some sort of religious daily ritual for many years, sometimes it lapses and others I do it religiously (I crack myself up!).  A lot of heathens do his, some do it by the book and other have their own style. I tend to do a little of both. In the morning I get up and I go about my business. Once I wash and I feel ready to actually start the day, I take a walk to a little spot on my property, and I hail the day. A Some heathens recite the hail straight from Sigrdrífumál ; Hail, day! Hail, sons of day! And night and her daughter[9] now! Look on us here with loving eyes, That waiting we victory win. Hail to the gods! Ye goddesses, hail, And all the generous earth! Give to us wisdom and goodly speech, And healing hands, life-long . I tend to go a bit different and make my morning béde more personal. I face the east, raise my arms to the sky and say; Hail Sunna! Hail th...

Heathens have been struggling to build communities for about five decades now. These communities are like the ocean in that they come in waves. The swell in the sea and break on the banks of the Earth. I have seen many Heathen communities grow, shrink, scatter, splinter, and simple break. There ae so many causes for these destructive forces, but the main reason is that we are a modern people and we live in a modern world. People come and go as individuals or families and simply disappear. It is just the way our society is structured. In ancient times people moved in tribal units. The depended on each for survival. We know there were tribal customs and eventually laws about the disabled, lame, and those who were a “burden to the tribe” wherein these folks could be ritually sacrificed or simply left to die in the wilderness. These acts were for the good of the tribe, but today are unheard of in our modern world. The tribal peoples needed to stick together, be health, strong, and willing ...

Unverifiable Personal Gnosis is dismissed by some Heathens because it cannot be verified by some written source. UPG is when an individual gains an understanding of a god, spirit, myth, or ritual by means of intuition or the experience of communication with a non-human entity. Therefore, it cannot be verified by the sources, it is a personal experience. I can see why some would doubt this knowledge and reject it a s a BS. However, take the source. Is the person who has had his experience trustworthy, honorable, truthful, and wise? Do you trust them? The Lore Be afraid, be very afraid! The reconstruction of ancient Heathenry has put a lot of emphasis on The Lore . Making his the be all end all of knowledge. First, the lore is important in understanding and recreating the spiritual and religious practices of the ancient Heathens. However, it was transcribed by Christian monks and has been interpreted by a lot of people with different ideas. Pick up a few copies of Hávamál , go the s...

Throughout my Heathen life, I have tried to have daily routines that I do to bring spirituality to the world around me. We do not, and probably cannot, see the world the way The Ancestors did. Our world is mundane, full of science and explanations to “why” things are. Seeing mysticism and magic doesn’t come easy. I sated that I “try” to have a daily routine. This does not always happen. In fact, most of the time it does not happen. Why? Well, because I let the modern world get in the way. Got to make coffee, get the kids up and off to school, go to work…and so on. By the time I think about a morning bede (prayer) I’m in the car and halfway to the office. I have read in several books, a few websites, and countless blogs that as Heathens we should have a daily ritual routine. I have read that The Ancestors did this and we should too. I am going to make an educated guess here and say that the idea that pre-Christian peoples, namely the Indo-European Tribes may have had some sort of dail...

  Eclecticism in Heathenry is the idea that the Heathen has taken what he knows from the lore, history, and archaeology and basically filling in the missing parts based on instinct or other religious practices. Often eclectics borrow from other religions and traditions that feel right. This includes things like burning sage, drumming, and even holytides and even gods in some cases. The problem with this is that reconstructionists and orthodox Heathens have a real problem with this. They feel that tis is a “corruption” of the “true” faith. I look at myself as a liberal reconstructionist. That is, I feel it is ok to filling the blacks based on a gut feeling. I have a Anlo-Saxon gods and Norse gods all together and I draw from the Saxon and Norse traditions for a lot of my practices. I also incorporate drums and incense (sage) in my ritual. One reason for this is that when I found Asatru it was simple a Norse system. As I grew and became educated, my belief system evolved. I do not ...

 Take a look at the various Asatru organizations and groupings out there on the web there is a likelihood they will have a link to Heathen Holidays. You can also do a Google search and find a lot of links about heathen holidays and Wikipedia has a complete breakdown of Heathen holidays and days of remembrance.  From source to source you will see some similarities and some differences. In Some cases, the names are different, in others the dates. These holidays are different between Heathen sects as well. Anglo-Saxon Heathens and Theodish Heathens have different holidays by name and date. Essentially there is no standardization in the Heathen holiday schedule. Heathen holidays ten to fall all over the place. On the solstice, a full moon, a new moon, a date recorded by some scholar monk in the way back days… It is pretty much open to interpretation by whatever person, or a group wants to do. I’m betting some of you are doubting me on this. I have seen list of Heathen holidays r...

Take a look at the various Asatru organizations and groupings out there on the web there is a likelihood they will have a link to Heathen Holidays. You can also do a Google search and find a lot of links about heathen holidays and Wikipedia has a complete breakdown of Heathen holidays and days of remembrance.  From source to source you will see some similarities and some differences. In Some cases, the names are different, in others the dates. These holidays are different between Heathen sects as well. Anglo-Saxon Heathens and Theodish Heathens have different holidays by name and date. Essentially there is no standardization in the Heathen holiday schedule. Heathen holidays ten to fall all over the place. On the solstice, a full moon, a new moon, a date recorded by some scholar monk in the way back days… It is pretty much open to interpretation by whatever person, or a group wants to do. I’m betting some of you are doubting me on this. I have seen list of Heathen holidays ranging...

  The lore is funny. First it was all written down by Christian monks in a time where you might not want to promote any sort of wild ideas about how cool pagans were. I recently picked up a book that a list of nine vices that Heathens will be punished for in Náströnd. Náströnd a place in Hel where Níðhöggr lives and chews on corpses. It is the afterlife for those guilty of murder, adultery, oath-breaking, and so on. Völuspá 38-39 talks about this realm and the book, which I will not mention, list locations in the lore where we can see examples of their vices and their punishments. This is an attempt to justify the vices. Punishments, and Náströnd itself. I have always been skeptical, thus these nine realms as a place of punishment for misdeeds have always seems suspect and a lot like the Christian Hell to me. So, a long time ago I put this aside and said… “I’ll get back to this.” Well, the time has come. So, let’s look at this. The nine so called vices are, murder, perjury, adult...

  Almost from the start modern Asatru had a priestly class. This is due to the fact that the founders of modern Asatru were creating a religion based upon lost ways of the Germanic people. They had little to go on from the past, but plenty to draw from their present. Religion, that is Christianity, had a priestly class, therefore so should Asatru. However, from a historical prospective there is little evidence to suggest that the job of priest ever existed in pre-Christian Germanic religious practice. If you go online and look up “Asatru Groups” or “Organizations” you will find Heathen groups both large and small. All of the national and international organizations have a priestly class associated with them, most calling it the Go ð i. All have some sort of Go ð i training program that you need to endure in order to represent yourself as a priest of the local Heathens. In most cases, this is a good idea. The Troth has an excellent program that will educate you on modern Asatru pr...

 A thousand or so years ago the European Heathen peoples Christianized. What this means is that they threw out the old gods in favor of one new god and that was that. Well, not really. Christian historians (i.e., monks and the like) would like you to believe that all the old folkloric traditions, the tribalist pagan worship was put on the curb and picked up to be disposed of. The reality is that most of the ancient pagan ways of the European Heathens was incorporated into Christianity, including the gods. This may come as a shock, but we know that Heathens prayed, and they did so in various ways: standing and holding their hands open and high, keening, and prone. When they prayed, they asked for things like help with crops, health, trade, and probable for that new tunic they saw in the corner store. The point is they pray for the same things people, non-Heathens, pray for now and they did it much in the same way Christians pray today. In the Heathen glory days, religion was tri...

I have changed the name of this blog to Hammerhof. I am making a slight change in direction to focus on Hammerhof rather than random musings. Hammerhof is theoretically a heathen temple complex that I have been building over the years.  Going forward I will be focusing on Hammerhof and its future and Heathenry in its present modern evolution. What that means is that I will write about the Hof and the practices within.  Back in 2020 I wrote about Hammerhof as a kindred . I have Since stopped the use of the word kindred in favor of tribe. Back in 2020 I was trying to revive the old Hammerhof as a it was in the early 2000s, a kindred. Time changes all, and Hammerhof time as a kindred or tribe is over. Hammerhof and I have evolved to a new state, a new level of awareness and being. I am moving forward to build my temple and to make use of it. 

I was watching a video on YouTube by Ocean Keltoi, Eostre / Ostara |Who Was the Pagan Easter Goddess? , and I have a few issues with a few points he has made. First, I live Ocean and I watch most of his videos which I find them informative and entertaining. The video explains the origins and misconceptions by some modern Heathens surrounding Easter and Eostre/Ostara. He makes a lot of points stating that the modern practice does not jive with the historical evidence we currently have. He sites that there is no historical evidence for the eggs, rabbits, most of the Heathen/pagan things. The only evidence is that eggs and rabbits have nothing to do with Christian Easter there for they must be Heathen. Keltoi makes a big stink about months, mostly March and April, and that Eostre/Ostara is not held in March at the Spring Equinox but in April. Keltoi points to the Anlo-Saxon names of these months, Hrēðmonath and Eostremonath. The latter being modern April and the moth of Eostre or Easte...