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The Nature of the Gods

By: Gunnsmith

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Gday and

good thoughts to all,

People often ask questions about the nature of the Gods... how often and in what manner we ought to honor or "worship" them.. and what the fundamental principles of a heathen life are...

And I would be interested in what thoughts you may have on this... here are a few thoughts I had today.


I have read that the honoring of Odhinn or Woden is at least 8000 years old from the archeological records, and that the roots coming in from Shamanism and the Sanscrit culture go back from 10,000 to 100,000 years. Back to the dreamtime of our people in other words. No doubt we first knew the Shining Ones as the powers of nature and the vital forces of life itself.. and as the "source" of all the aspects of our very humanity and sentience which we have inherited from them..

Later, perhaps, we began to know their names....

One way of understanding it is that we are the material expression of their "true nature".. just as the Northern Way or Asatru is an expression of "our" true nature...

By understanding our higher nature, then, one can get a glimpse of some aspects of the Shining Ones.

Stefn Ullarson wrote"... My life is a blot". meaning that is ones life is an expression of honor to everything that we hold high

And so the act of blot, or prayer, or honor.. is but the final focus of a true life of blot, prayer, or honor.. expressed through everything one thinks... says and especially their acts in the world.

How one goes about this "Life" of honor an respect....... Aye, that's the crux of the entire thing... and I think it has a lot to do with living in harmony with the knowledge and the principles of our Folk Tradition or "Way".

Of course, this is extraordinarily hard to do, because the society's that we live in are following a different belief system altogether. Some things come to mind on living the true life.... first and foremost,. the Havamal is the council of the Valfather on this. Consider your words and actions then as a "sending"... and the consequences as a "return". I have found that every small thing that a person does "right" that is, according to the Folkway.. gives a positive return that you can actually feel.. its good, and it makes you stronger. That's the best resonance and verification and goes a lot further than anything a person can say about it.

"word from word," says the lore... "gave words"... "deed from deed.. gave deeds". In this way, we forge a new reality.

The old traditions rose up with us "out of the ground".. and it is the state of harmony that we see in unfettered nature...

which is a very good metaphor for the living of a "true life". All things then, according to their nature, in a state of balance and harmony with everything else. That's why we honor the spirits of the Land, Sea and Sky... because we first show by how we live...respect and honor to the land, sea and sky. The same is true of the Ancestral spirits and the Gods... our elder kin...

We respect and honor them first by our acts of living.. and then after by our acts of "religious expression" on special days.

After a while... a few years, usually...., a person begins to, as Valgard Murray says... " truly think like a heathen".. and that is the beginnings of the..."true and authentic state of being".. or " condition of natural wisdom" that our ancestors had.

They were wiser, I often say, in many ways than we, but not knowing this was so.... therefore lost the luck of it.

thoughts?

Gunn