I can gladly help with both of those points.
What “Sacrifice” is and What it Means
The way I think about “sacrifice” (Old Norse blót) is that it’s a way to share wealth with the gods. This isn’t “wealth” as in money, but “wealth” as in abundance.
This was the purpose of sacrificing animals in ancient times as well. The Norse economy wasn’t based in gold or silver, but rather wealth was measured using livestock. If the gods did something that brought prosperity to humans, humans reciprocated by giving them a form of prosperity in return.
They only way they Norse would have developed “sacrifice” as a reciprocal custom is if they intuitively understood there’s life after death and therefore didn’t interpret dying as a problem or as a terrifying unknown. There’s some evidence to suggest this is the case. Clearly, animal sacrifices don’t symbolize reciprocity anymore because we have a different economy and very different notions around death, so it’s absolutely not something we can use to show appreciation for the gods today.
However, contemporary blót still serves the same function it always has: It’s a way to share wealth with the gods. But rather than sacrificing our modern-day money to them (which wouldn’t work anyway, because money represents wealth-potential and not wealth manifested), Heathens have defaulted to reciprocating using an even older form of wealth—hospitality. We share food, drinks, artwork, favors, and other forms of enrichment with the gods to show our appreciation.
The reason why we share this wealth is for the same reason we buy artwork from the artists we admire or treat our friends to dinner when we get a bonus; it’s because we want to share our riches with those who make our lives rich. It’s affection, not obligation, that motivates this behavior.
Catholic Attitudes Regarding Sacrifice
The idea that sacrifice ought to be painful comes wholly and completely from Catholicism. I’ll give you a quick education on Catholic beliefs so you know how and why this is.
Mainstream Catholicism rose to power in the context of feudalism. It’s basically the religion of serfdom and reflects the mentality of being a serf:
You agree that you’re born in sin (in debt).
You agree that the Lord (your landlord) provides for your wellbeing.
You agree that you belong to the Lord (are the property of your landlord) and that he can pass judgement on you however he sees fit.
You agree that everything you interact with, own, and produce belongs to the Lord (your landlord) and you give him whatever he decides to take.
You also agree that your only way to earn salvation (freedom from debt) is by serving the Lord (your landlord) dutifully and without complaint.
Therefore, your religion revolves around teaching you how to do this well.
Catholics learn to show respect to authority by expressing shame, submission, and willingness to accept judgement/punishment/condemnation from said authority. They interpret the act of refusing to abide by this norm as disrespectful, brazen, immature, and even threatening.
They also learn they get to be the ones judging and punishing others once they become authorities themselves (as parents, teachers, community leaders, etc), and thus pass the cycle of conditioning onto the next generation.
I’m not sure if Catholics even realize the feudal nature of all this. In any case, ex-Catholic Heathens import these attitudes wholesale into Heathenry, and an unfortunate number of them are quick to establish themselves as Heathen authorities so they can “get their turn” telling people what to do.
They claim “sacrifices should be painful” because being able to endure personal misery for the sake of glorifying something greater than oneself is what demonstrates loyalty to one’s lord and, allegedly, curries his favor. Giving up something they’d much rather keep is part of this, and begets the reverse-logic many ex-Catholic Heathens operate on: “If an offering doesn’t hurt to give, then it doesn’t mean anything.”
The idea that making offerings can be gratifying to both the giver and the receiver seems to be a foreign concept to them, probably because this assumes humans (serfs) can stand on equal footing with divinity (lords) and therefore make exchanges as equals.
But the thing is, we exchange on equal ground all the time in Heathenry because we don’t consider gods our lords nor do our gods consider us their serfs. We approach the gods as our family, friends, teachers, advisors, business partners, and—ultimately—members of our community. Anyone who tells you that sacrifices must hurt are just repeating Catholic talking points.
(I wasn’t raised religiously Catholic, but I absolutely grew up with cultural Catholicism as part of my household, and let me tell you, this paradigm is a nasty pair of shackles. You can be handed the key to freeing yourself and you will disagree that unlocking yourself is the rightful and just thing to do.)
Now for the question of how to get rid of the Protestant conditioning. I know you mentioned you know what this conditioning is and where it comes from, but you’re also asking me about a specific type from a specific denomination. I’ll talk about this conditioning a bit first since it might benefit others reading this:
If Catholicism is based in the feudal system and asks you to give up your freedom, then certain denominations of Protestantism are based in cult dynamics and ask you to give up your personality.
Becoming “the hands and feet of God” is, functionally speaking, the act of styling your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and even content-exposure according to an ideology your community approves of, rather than according your own likes and dislikes. The ex-protestants I know seem to have a very hard time developing a clear sense of self due to the way they were taught “becoming a person” works: By crafting an identity and then performing that identity.
Something that additionally contributes to the death of the personality is the way Protestants are taught to worship. In Catholicism, worship is very strictly a deed and has nothing to do with how you feel. In Protestantism, worship is purely the act of exercising the emotion known as euphoria. This is an intense emotion, and like all intense emotions it shuts down the ability to rationalize and look at situations objectively.
A lot of Protestants are conditioned to automatically feel euphoria whenever they think about the divine. They’re taught to interpret this as the divine’s presence (it’s not), and to interpret intensity of this emotion as a measurement of their faith (also not true). The only thing this is doing for you is making it difficult to think.
Handling Protestant Conditioning
I can do my best to offer ways to chip away at this conditioning. Some of these might not work or be applicable to you, but they certainly wouldn’t hurt to try:
Simply noticing conditioning will reduce its influence on you by half, so your goal is to notice it as much as possible. You seem to know the importance of this part already. That’s good! Keep it up!
Use a Hobby to Solve the “Hands and Feet” Problem
Solving the “hands and feet” problem means recognizing “the act of becoming a poster-child for the gods’ attributes and will” as unwanted conditioning.
The goal instead is to have your thoughts, behaviors, feelings, goals, desires, etc. be a reflection of what you personally like and dislike outside the context of an ideology, community, or identity. If you’re not sure what you like or dislike outside these things, here’s how you can figure it out:
Choose an arbitrary hobby. What the hobby is doesn’t really matter; it could be something super inane like knitting, rock collecting, or learning tongue-twisters. The point is to pick something you’re unfamiliar with, do it, and determine whether you find it interesting to do or boring to do using ONLY the activity itself as your point of measurement.
Here’s what you should pay attention to when you try out the hobby:
Notice if you try to gravitate toward any groups, subcultures, subreddits, or discord servers dedicated to or related to the hobby.
When watching how-to videos, notice if your attention is mostly focused on trying to connect to the person giving the demonstration in the video.
Notice if you feel the urge to seek out a mentor or an instructor to help you with this hobby.
Notice if you try to form a lifestyle around this hobby, or use lifestyle-inspiration to motivate you to do this hobby.
Notice if you feel the urge to champion a cause with this hobby.
Notice if you try to adopt the clothing, hairstyles, speech, and mannerisms of people who do this hobby.
Notice if you try to adopt the beliefs, values, and morals of those who do this hobby.
Notice if you try to search for a deeper meaning or purpose in this hobby.
Notice if you feel like you can’t determine if you like or dislike the hobby without getting feedback from others / researching what other people think about it / researching any discourse around it.
Notice if you say things like “I’m a new knitter” rather than “I’ve started learning how to knit.”
When you notice these things, reward yourself by telling yourself things like “Good job!” or “You did it!” or “Look at you go! You’re doing great!” This helps train your instincts to associate noticing Protestant conditioning with positive feelings.
Here are some additional things you should reward yourself for:
Reward yourself for telling no one about this hobby.
Reward yourself for refusing to dedicate the hobby to anything or anyone specific.
Reward yourself for being uncertain about whether you like or dislike the hobby. This is a sign you’re noticing there’s a sense of “lacking permission” there and are sitting with it.
Reward yourself for being able to make an assessment about whether you like the hobby or not.
Reward yourself for noticing if you stop doing the hobby, and for what reason.
Reward yourself for noticing if you keep doing the hobby, and for what reason.
You can try this with different hobbies and activities. Once you get good at determining what it feels like to enjoy/not enjoy something outside the context of identity, ideology, and community belonging, then you can move on to trying different expressions of clothing, hairstyles, manners of speech, etc. to see what you like there.
Practice Letting Go of Euphoria
Whenever you feel euphoria for the gods, take a few breaths and ground yourself. You don’t need to try to control this emotion, but definitely do things with your body to encourage the emotion to fade.
The act of feeling euphoria for gods isn’t really necessary in Heathenry, and therefore you’d benefit from retraining this response. It’s fine to have feelings about the gods, but you want to get to a point where you don’t always them, and you can let them come and go when you do.
The way to interact with Heathen gods is through the same standards you interact with friends, teachers, coworkers, and acquaintances. They’re people, and what we feel about the people in our lives is based in the history of how they’ve behaved towards us, not based in how intensely we can feel emotions for them.
It may help to remember that approaching people with euphoria is pretty much always unpleasant for them. It’s like when someone has a crush on you and you don’t have a crush on them in return. If anything, it makes genuine connection difficult.
Start a practice of doubt and reward yourself whenever you feel doubt. This’ll help teach you that doubt is a safe activity, which will also help interrupt the protestant conditioning.
Ex-Protestant Heathens & Ex-Catholic Heathens
One thing I realized as I was writing this is that ex-Protestant Heathens probably don’t recognize when ex-Catholic Heathens are spouting Catholic talking-points. This means there are a lot of ex-Protestants interpreting expressions of Catholicism as expressions of Heathenry. This would almost be hilarious if it wasn’t so detrimental to both Heathenry and people’s wellbeing.
Just so everyone’s clear: Heathenry doesn’t share any qualities with Catholicism. It doesn’t share any qualities with Protestantism either. You don’t honor the gods by being servile to them, and you don’t honor the gods by becoming a walking embodiment of all they stand for.
Anyway, I hope this helps! It got unexpectedly long on me.
And if you what to know what IS Heathenry, I have an entire website devoted to the subject.
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