the religious spectrum for me pt 1

I call myself Jotnartru mostly, but will through around Asatru if I suspect the person I'm talking to might just google it later. While I do venerate the Aesir and the Vanir, I primerily worship the Jotnar since I feel a strong connection to nature, the elements, and their rawest form, which more often than not is represented through the frost giants. My beliefs are that Jotunnheim is a spiritual dimension consisting of everything that could be conceived in nature even beyond our understanding and that we as humans are miniscule in that conception, thusly, to go there psychically it would seem frozen because the larger something is, the slower it is, especially in our own perception. That's not to say the "giants" are giant. They can be if they want, but they are what the make themselves at any rate. 

There are two things you have to remember when diving into Norse Paganism-- it's a proto-religion so writing and speech were in their early stages, and most of what we have were collections and translations made by Christians in their early "eradicative" period. King Olaf's genocide against pagans ranks just under the Spanish Inquisition, so any attempt to preserve the religious stories was under Christian-conversion pretenses. To describe a state of unmoving would be synonymous to frozen which is synonymous to cold. "Entropy" is a new word, and not something you can properly translate into Old Icelandic. Then you have Icelandic converts writing down the verbal stories. Their bias whether purposely or not would be to take things too literal and continue the "them vs. us" narrative that is so like their theology. 

This is why I can venerate Odin and Fenrir without offending them. There story is more a lesson than anything for both sides. Historically, to pillage a clan's village and kidnap their younguns to raise as your own was not uncommon. Whether because you had no heirs, needed more, or just wanted someone to do your laundry, the leftover victims of viking raids ended up as members of those viking houses. The lesson for Odin is that in trying to change your fate, you end up creating it. Everyone keeps saying that Fenrir was prophesized to kill Odin, but I haven't read anything that actually says that. "Great misfortune" and "destruction" but if you've ever owned a dog, then you know there will be great misfortune and destruction to your furniture, so being that vague doesn't really cut it for me; and the "prophecies" they talk about are never actually described. The only prophecies that I've come across seem to be the results of the Aesir being assholes to Loki's bastard kids. 

So going back to how vikings would indeed take home women and children in their pillages, doing his pends the potential risk of retaliation against you. Someone with a strong enough mind is not going to just be your thrall, and I think Fenrir's continuously increasing size can allude to that. If you don't deal with this failed-attempt thrall properly, you risk them coming after your ass. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they hate you, but they will remember the betrayal and treatment of them and it is likely to come haunt you. If a viking takes a kid and makes them apart of the family but the kid is headstrong, then dropping them of on an island to die because they didn't have the balls to stab the kid instead (not advocating killing younguns or anything), then you can't be shocked that the kid just might survive and just might come back and fuck yo ass up, especially if you did them dirty prior to coming to your household. And that's what Odin and the boyz did-- kidnapped Fenrir and his siblings, dicked over his siblings, decided to keep him because "dahh~ cute pupper" then were like "ew he too big" even though Fenrir was not violent to them at all and the Aesir were the ones that were being uncalled for chickenshits. They decide, "hey let's play a game" and lie and completely fuck over Fenrir--- THEN salt the wound even further. Like, how the fuck am I supposed to side with Odin on this one? Because Ragnarok---

Oh you mean that thing that is a metaphor for cultural take-over and change, because that's what people did when they conquered one another. They warred and eradicated the losers' religion. The Norse religion is full of this. So many of the non-Aesir are from other religions that were wiped out, conformed, and converted. Christians did that shit all the time; every demon they have is just another religion's deity. You demonize your enemy. Hell, we do this now! It's probably why they even mentioned it, because it happens so often and all the time that it would be rather noble to give your people a heads up.

So yeah, I lean heavily towards the Jotnar and choose to believe that the Aesir and Vanir were being misconstrued in post-conversion Icelandic literature. Even if they were like that, Ragnarok has already occurred, and a revival of the old deities brings new concepts and new prophecy. Perhaps we need to look at Ragnarok more literally, considering the Earth's patterns. But rather than punish the chaos-- only making it more pissed and come back with full force-- wouldn't it be more wise to address the chaos with respect in order to understand it and possibly pacify some of the destruction. 

Again, most of the frost giants are natural forces. In my experience (cuz, let's face it, all witchcraft is anecdotal and you're lying if you disagree), there are more results to be had in praying to the storm itself to avoid destroying your home, than to a guardian that may or may not be a responsible party to the storm. I would suffer property damages praying Thor to shield us from the storm, but if I pray to Rind to "just not," then the storm dissipates before it gets up the hill to my house. Does it always work? No, but magick is a play on probability and perception before it is anything else. The storm's worst spared my family, but hail damaged my car, yet the engine was going out so insurance paid for a new car. Rind completely ignores my request because the farmer up the road needs the land revitalized with rain and lightning-- and maybe the old dilapidated barn needed tearing down anyway. Make sense? Well, it does to me. 

I tend to not get along with most Asatru because of these beliefs. Some of them take the Eddas and literature too literally, and clearly I don't. The Havamal has more in it than the eddas imo. At least the Havamal works as a guide. Not a complete and all-out good guide, but a guide nonetheless. It's like Leviticus; it's got some good pointers but plenty of flaws. Don't fuck siblings, but why are we against tattoos? In the Havamal, you have words about honor, loyalty, and rejection of naïve thoughts and action, but you also have things about women being liars and it's okay to leave babies to die of exposure? If you look at the piece as a historical document BEFORE a religious one, you see what's up really. Tattoos and piercings were a good place for infections to occur in ye' old days, and when uncle-brother is already fucking his sister-mother, you need to be a bit more stern about getting people to not die prematurely. By today's standards, killing born babies is pretty much a no-no unless you're in the New York or any of the other states that allow post-birth aBoRtIoN, but back when healthcare consisted of tree bark, cutting the limbs off, and prayer... yeah, you left deformed babies to die in the woods because to care for them until their ultimate death was likely to be detrimental to the rest of the house. And again, perspective coming into play-- perhaps it's also trying to get men to not be nice-guy simps over women. It's probably not, it's probably a patriarchal defemation of women, but let's face it, the Havamal was traced to the rise of Christianity as well-- I jut think it has more to offer than the Eddas.

I feel like there is more to say, but I'm tired and the cookies are done baking, so I will place a "part 1" on this, and maybe come back to the subject later, possibly to discuss my run-ins with Norse Pagan literature, because boy howdy, do I got shit to say about it!