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This series of posts will be a type I rarely post, where I say what I think. Non-heathens will probably want to skip opening them.
Heathenry has very few obligations for behavior or thought. There are a few pronouncements from Christian chroniclers, such as Bede's reports on the Anglo-Saxon practices prior to the introduction of Easter and the rest of the Xian requirements, and Snorri's description of required yearly blót participation in the Saga of Hákon the Good. "Hávamál" is a slippery guide to behavior, full of contradictions and unclear directions (one famous crux: what is blóting "too much", and does s[er] ofblótit really mean blóting the wrong way, since the passage begins by asking whether we know how to do it right, or does it refer to blóting in the wrong spirit, since the previous half-line refers to asking/praying, and what follows as reason is "for a gift asks for a gift"?), and we have to decide which of the apparently outmoded lines to update, like not leaving home unarmed and not praising a woman till she's burned on the pyre (not leaving home unarmed: see the opening lines, never let down your guard, always be prepared to defend yourself, but not necessarily with edged steel or bullets as first recourse; not praising a woman till she's burned on the pyre—gritting my teeth over the male-centrism: not regarding anyone as 100% perfect, praiseworthy, and trustworthy while they are still alive to make mistakes or reveal themselves as duplicitous). The Nine Noble Virtues are a modern hack job; although they've served well those who want a quick moral guideline, anyone familiar with Óðinn will find them glib.
But that's not to say heathenry is a value-free religion. It's more demanding, not less, to not have a neat list of edicts to follow, but be expected to follow an honorable path as a fully responsible person, without a cheatsheet, without a buffer of conventional obligations about which one need not and probably should not think too much. No dietary requirements; no sexual rules; not even obligatory observances (the wheel of the year is only tangentially related to heathenry). It's a legitimate view that a lot of "Hávamál" is minutiæ presented tongue-in-cheek to make us think about what matters. What harm does it really do to anything except our own health if we get up in the night for purposes other than peeing or killing someone? Do the gods care if we reveal ourselves as fools by blabbing too much in social gatherings, rather than listening to what others say and learning something? But the ancient heathens enacted swift and harsh punishments for offenses including murder and mocking the gods, and extended families bore a lot of responsibility for keeping their unruly members in line, and were punished for not doing so. Importantly, very often the punishment imposed by either the clan or others was exile: go somewhere else without benefit of family support, and start over. Fair enough, especially for dissidents and those disinclined to work at the tasks required where they lived; let them seek their fortunes elsewhere, or find a religion they could believe in.
The problem is, non-indigenous religions, religions based on conversion, have as an article of faith that their worldview is the only legitimate one. Hence the normalization of conversion, even its packaging as a beneficial act. Hence the distinction drawn between a religion/faith and a "spirituality" or a "mythology" or even a "belief system", and the hypocritical viewpoint that fanatical adherance to the approved religion is normative, and that the fact most adherents of other religions are go-through-the-motions, this-is-just-what-we-do people shows that those are not real religions; all religions have mostly lukewarm, reflexive adherents, that's human nature; for all the dominant religions in the world today, most of their adherents are not theologians, not fanatics, have never considered changing their religion, think of something else when they do practice it, and don't actually know very much about it. Hence also the co-opting of morality as a term for "following the rules of my particular religion". That's not peculiar to Xians, even to American fundamentalists, although US collective memory is short and most Americans don't realize there was outraged backlash against the self-styled Moral Majority. It's the nature of most religions; one's religion is the legitimating source for one's morality, so if it's part of that religion to believe that it is the only legitimate religion, then it is the only valid arbiter of morality; morality consists in what that religion says it is.
We may flinch at the word "religion" just as most progressive Americans flinch at the word "morality", and with more reason, because most of us live immersed in a toxic stew of simultaneously coercive and exclusionary religions. But calling heathenry a way of life instead doesn't deny that it has moral elements; in fact it puts them to the fore by backgrounding the element of relationship to the gods (re-ligio, re-linking). Calling it a "spirituality", IMO, denigrates it as worthy of less respect than a religion. YMMV, but that's the mental trick probably used by the "heathen leader" who ran for elected office in New York as head of a þeodisc group—with sworn followers—but told Irish Catholics that, as a Catholic-born person of Irish heritage, he was a lifelong Irish Catholic. Rather than "return falsehood with a lie" (taka ...lausung við lygi) he returned the trust of his followers with a lie; he was play-acting his heathenry, in his mind it was not a real religion but a means to power. I will quote "Hávamál" yet again: óvinar síns | skyli engi maðr | vinar vinr vera—"no one should be a friend to their enemy's friend". Or their friend's enemy, mutatis mutandis, languages with case systems, situations where people line up. If you talk the talk of heathenry as your way, walk the walk, especially with respect to those you have responsibilities towards: family, followers ... the gods may seem very remote, I grant you, especially if you're used to deity being defined as the ineffably unutterably remote. But following an "alternative religion" does not require the rest of us to open our minds to the point where our brains fall out.
A mid-year article in The Wild Hunt by Karl Seigfried, a kindred goði and divinity school graduate who participates in The Troth's clergy training program, teaches Norse "mythology" at various colleges in Chicagoland, and is a regular columnist in that pan-pagan publication, stresses that it is not merely valid but an obligation for us to express our heathen point of view—our heathen morality—as part of the public discourse. But its main emphasis is on drawing on our experience of adherents of a minority religion, whose existence is often subsumed under "other" or flat-out denied and whose voices are often excluded even from interfaith conversations, to empathize with other minorities and work for democratic inclusion. This is IMO misplaced emphasis, at its root ceding the position that the US does in fact have an "established religion". Democracy is not a religious position per se, adherents of many religions are divided on how they view it, and while the protections of the First Amendment theoretically shield everyone in the US (large numbers of people in the world, including a large percentage of heathens, live in countries with official religions, no matter how benign those who are adherants of the official religion of their country consider them to be), they operate on a rarified governmental level. Our obligation as heathens is to follow our own consciences, be friends to our friends and to their friends ("Hávamál", beginning of the same verse: Vin sínum | skal maðr vinr vera, | þeim ok þess vin; there and in several other passages, I parenthetically note, is the counterpoint to the "self-reliance" of the Nine Virtues), stand up for what is right by our lights. That's the basis on which we should, individually or collectively, defend the rights of others. Heathenry is not proven good and true by what others think of it, or suffered to exist only if it helps others to their goals. We should be decent toward others because that's part of our morality; we should help others when doing so doesn't hurt our own interests or those of our families and friends because that's part of our morality. Others have their own religions and their own priorities, some at odds with ours (and in addition to enemies, we face a vast amount of ignorance, even on such basic things as the existence of polytheistic religions). That's the problem.
Seigfried sets my teeth on edge when he writes: "We don't practice ancient religions." That's taking praxis as defining. As he goes on to say, "We are members of new religious movements that are informed and inspired by what we know of ancient practice." We can't know the details of what the ancient heathens did (and it must have varied considerably in any case, including the aforementioned large numbers of reflexive, un-"religious" heathens). But we for damned sure honor the same deities. We don't have to use coined words like Ásatrú (though those who like to are welcome, and I have been furious at having that term thrown at me in a tidy illustration of the mindset that only a few religions, at most, are worthy of the name); we have every right to call ourselves heathens, or followers of the Northern gods, or adherents of forn siðr, the Old Way (which to my mind does claim similarity of practice; I would hesitate to use it myself, but any number of groups in Scandinavia, and some in the Anglosphere, use it or modern derivatives). And that does entail applying heathen moral standards, as part of our commitment to a real religion.
Heathenry has very few obligations for behavior or thought. There are a few pronouncements from Christian chroniclers, such as Bede's reports on the Anglo-Saxon practices prior to the introduction of Easter and the rest of the Xian requirements, and Snorri's description of required yearly blót participation in the Saga of Hákon the Good. "Hávamál" is a slippery guide to behavior, full of contradictions and unclear directions (one famous crux: what is blóting "too much", and does s[er] ofblótit really mean blóting the wrong way, since the passage begins by asking whether we know how to do it right, or does it refer to blóting in the wrong spirit, since the previous half-line refers to asking/praying, and what follows as reason is "for a gift asks for a gift"?), and we have to decide which of the apparently outmoded lines to update, like not leaving home unarmed and not praising a woman till she's burned on the pyre (not leaving home unarmed: see the opening lines, never let down your guard, always be prepared to defend yourself, but not necessarily with edged steel or bullets as first recourse; not praising a woman till she's burned on the pyre—gritting my teeth over the male-centrism: not regarding anyone as 100% perfect, praiseworthy, and trustworthy while they are still alive to make mistakes or reveal themselves as duplicitous). The Nine Noble Virtues are a modern hack job; although they've served well those who want a quick moral guideline, anyone familiar with Óðinn will find them glib.
But that's not to say heathenry is a value-free religion. It's more demanding, not less, to not have a neat list of edicts to follow, but be expected to follow an honorable path as a fully responsible person, without a cheatsheet, without a buffer of conventional obligations about which one need not and probably should not think too much. No dietary requirements; no sexual rules; not even obligatory observances (the wheel of the year is only tangentially related to heathenry). It's a legitimate view that a lot of "Hávamál" is minutiæ presented tongue-in-cheek to make us think about what matters. What harm does it really do to anything except our own health if we get up in the night for purposes other than peeing or killing someone? Do the gods care if we reveal ourselves as fools by blabbing too much in social gatherings, rather than listening to what others say and learning something? But the ancient heathens enacted swift and harsh punishments for offenses including murder and mocking the gods, and extended families bore a lot of responsibility for keeping their unruly members in line, and were punished for not doing so. Importantly, very often the punishment imposed by either the clan or others was exile: go somewhere else without benefit of family support, and start over. Fair enough, especially for dissidents and those disinclined to work at the tasks required where they lived; let them seek their fortunes elsewhere, or find a religion they could believe in.
The problem is, non-indigenous religions, religions based on conversion, have as an article of faith that their worldview is the only legitimate one. Hence the normalization of conversion, even its packaging as a beneficial act. Hence the distinction drawn between a religion/faith and a "spirituality" or a "mythology" or even a "belief system", and the hypocritical viewpoint that fanatical adherance to the approved religion is normative, and that the fact most adherents of other religions are go-through-the-motions, this-is-just-what-we-do people shows that those are not real religions; all religions have mostly lukewarm, reflexive adherents, that's human nature; for all the dominant religions in the world today, most of their adherents are not theologians, not fanatics, have never considered changing their religion, think of something else when they do practice it, and don't actually know very much about it. Hence also the co-opting of morality as a term for "following the rules of my particular religion". That's not peculiar to Xians, even to American fundamentalists, although US collective memory is short and most Americans don't realize there was outraged backlash against the self-styled Moral Majority. It's the nature of most religions; one's religion is the legitimating source for one's morality, so if it's part of that religion to believe that it is the only legitimate religion, then it is the only valid arbiter of morality; morality consists in what that religion says it is.
We may flinch at the word "religion" just as most progressive Americans flinch at the word "morality", and with more reason, because most of us live immersed in a toxic stew of simultaneously coercive and exclusionary religions. But calling heathenry a way of life instead doesn't deny that it has moral elements; in fact it puts them to the fore by backgrounding the element of relationship to the gods (re-ligio, re-linking). Calling it a "spirituality", IMO, denigrates it as worthy of less respect than a religion. YMMV, but that's the mental trick probably used by the "heathen leader" who ran for elected office in New York as head of a þeodisc group—with sworn followers—but told Irish Catholics that, as a Catholic-born person of Irish heritage, he was a lifelong Irish Catholic. Rather than "return falsehood with a lie" (taka ...lausung við lygi) he returned the trust of his followers with a lie; he was play-acting his heathenry, in his mind it was not a real religion but a means to power. I will quote "Hávamál" yet again: óvinar síns | skyli engi maðr | vinar vinr vera—"no one should be a friend to their enemy's friend". Or their friend's enemy, mutatis mutandis, languages with case systems, situations where people line up. If you talk the talk of heathenry as your way, walk the walk, especially with respect to those you have responsibilities towards: family, followers ... the gods may seem very remote, I grant you, especially if you're used to deity being defined as the ineffably unutterably remote. But following an "alternative religion" does not require the rest of us to open our minds to the point where our brains fall out.
A mid-year article in The Wild Hunt by Karl Seigfried, a kindred goði and divinity school graduate who participates in The Troth's clergy training program, teaches Norse "mythology" at various colleges in Chicagoland, and is a regular columnist in that pan-pagan publication, stresses that it is not merely valid but an obligation for us to express our heathen point of view—our heathen morality—as part of the public discourse. But its main emphasis is on drawing on our experience of adherents of a minority religion, whose existence is often subsumed under "other" or flat-out denied and whose voices are often excluded even from interfaith conversations, to empathize with other minorities and work for democratic inclusion. This is IMO misplaced emphasis, at its root ceding the position that the US does in fact have an "established religion". Democracy is not a religious position per se, adherents of many religions are divided on how they view it, and while the protections of the First Amendment theoretically shield everyone in the US (large numbers of people in the world, including a large percentage of heathens, live in countries with official religions, no matter how benign those who are adherants of the official religion of their country consider them to be), they operate on a rarified governmental level. Our obligation as heathens is to follow our own consciences, be friends to our friends and to their friends ("Hávamál", beginning of the same verse: Vin sínum | skal maðr vinr vera, | þeim ok þess vin; there and in several other passages, I parenthetically note, is the counterpoint to the "self-reliance" of the Nine Virtues), stand up for what is right by our lights. That's the basis on which we should, individually or collectively, defend the rights of others. Heathenry is not proven good and true by what others think of it, or suffered to exist only if it helps others to their goals. We should be decent toward others because that's part of our morality; we should help others when doing so doesn't hurt our own interests or those of our families and friends because that's part of our morality. Others have their own religions and their own priorities, some at odds with ours (and in addition to enemies, we face a vast amount of ignorance, even on such basic things as the existence of polytheistic religions). That's the problem.
Seigfried sets my teeth on edge when he writes: "We don't practice ancient religions." That's taking praxis as defining. As he goes on to say, "We are members of new religious movements that are informed and inspired by what we know of ancient practice." We can't know the details of what the ancient heathens did (and it must have varied considerably in any case, including the aforementioned large numbers of reflexive, un-"religious" heathens). But we for damned sure honor the same deities. We don't have to use coined words like Ásatrú (though those who like to are welcome, and I have been furious at having that term thrown at me in a tidy illustration of the mindset that only a few religions, at most, are worthy of the name); we have every right to call ourselves heathens, or followers of the Northern gods, or adherents of forn siðr, the Old Way (which to my mind does claim similarity of practice; I would hesitate to use it myself, but any number of groups in Scandinavia, and some in the Anglosphere, use it or modern derivatives). And that does entail applying heathen moral standards, as part of our commitment to a real religion.