melthewitch

mel, she/her, 20, bi as hell

[melthewitch]

hi! welcome to my side blog for all things witchy/pagan!

there are no nazis in valhalla (fuck off white supremacists & terfs)

main.

[skaldish]

I don’t think people realize just how many USChristian attitudes get passed around in Heathenry, so I compiled different statements and behaviors I’ve seen over the years that reflect Christian notions not original to Heathenry. These examples are illustrative rather than definitive, since I’m only somewhat familiar with different Christian frameworks, but it should be enough to give you the picture:

General Christianity

“The first and most important thing you need to do to practice Heathenry is read the Eddas.”

“You must worship Odin even if you don’t want to, because he’s the head god.”

“The point of being Heathen is to live life in a way that grants you entry to Valhalla.”

“Valhalla is the good/awesome afterlife and Helheim is the bad/boring afterlife.”

“The Æsir are good and the jötnar are evil.”

“Odin is like God, Loki is like the Devil, and Baldr is like Jesus.”

“Odin is more powerful than the rest of the gods.”

“Ragnarok is the End Times.”

(“Us vs. them” attitudes.)

(Not knowing what to do with the the goddesses in general, regardless of one’s gender.)

Catholic-Specific

“To be Heathen, you must serve the gods.”

“We can’t truly know the gods, only attempt to understand them through the Eddas.”

“The gods are distant and don’t care about our personal needs or lives.”

“We must act as the gods’ ambassadors on Earth.”

“Making sacrifices should be painful. That’s why it’s called a sacrifice.”

“Ragnarök is the End Times and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

(Treating the Hávamál as scripture.)

(Using medieval Icelandic law-tracts as a stand-in for Heathen religious orthodoxy.)

(Observing strict worship and insisting others do the same.)

(Adopting a very feudalistic relationship with the gods; lord/servant dynamics.)

Protestant-Specific

“Showing devotion to the gods is done by acting as their hands and feet on earth.”

“You must think about the gods all the time and involve them in everything you do.”

“Why should we merely ‘work with’ the gods when we can worship them?”

“Ragnarök is the End Times and we must prepare to fight on the side of the gods.” OR...

“Ragnarök is the End Times and we must help fulfill it.”

(Behaving as marginalized on the basis of their faith.)

(Reacting badly when confronted with new information about Heathenry.)

(Making bold or even standoffish declarations of faith.)

If you come from a Christian background and hear someone make statements like this, you’re probably going to feel pressured to come up with a counterargument for why it’s okay for you to disagree. What you actually need to do is dismiss the premise entirely. These arguments aren’t reflective of Heathen truths and you don’t have to argue with them as though they are.

This is also not a dig at those who’ve made these statements / done these behaviors before. It’s not exactly second-nature for us to break out of the habit of believing in a specific idea or behaving in a specific way when we believed / behaved that way for most of our lives. However, it’s still worth understanding how specific to Christianity these things are and trying to move away from them.

It’s up to you if you want to point out the nature of these arguments to the people making them. But if you do, I recommend doing so tactfully, with a clear head, and with a very clear understanding about what makes the premise Christian in nature.

Let me know if you want clarification on any of these points and why they aren’t reflective of Heathenry. I’m happy to go into it.

[broomsick]

Scandinavian myths for children, Katya Anikina

[when-november-ends]

"i asked ChatGPT", "i asked Grok", well i asked Odin and he raised an eyebrow at me and told me to figure it out myself

[starsanddawnbreak]

“If you want to get closer to the gods you have to be ready to handle being seen.”

- apollo, again, dropping bangers.

[sacredlittleember]

land spirits do not have to be dramatic.

sometimes reverence for land starts very simply:

learning the names of local plants. noticing where water gathers. thanking a tree before taking from it. picking up trash. leaving a place better than you found it. sitting quietly long enough to feel the mood of the land.

animism is not always spectacle.

sometimes it is relationship, attention, and care.

[witchble]

Science is spiritual!

Learning how the world works doesn’t strip it of magic, it reveals even more of it. The more I understand the universe, the more sacred it feels.

[brigitte-poetry]

I wish more pagans would stop acting like deities are fossils who have remained completely unchanged by time since the day they were first worshiped. If we can acknowledge how much societies and values changed from ancient times up to the present, then we should also acknowledge that the gods can and have changed too. Hell, the gods even changed along with their cultures back in antiquity! Whenever someone talks about an offering, practice or interpretation being "too modern" I just get so annoyed because it's operating on the mindset that the gods can never change, should never change and have never changed, which just isn't true.

[skaldish]

Myth vs. Story

I realized I’ve never written about the differences between “Norse mythology” and “fictional stories featuring the Norse gods” before, mostly because people already know there’s a difference, and that alone is enough for most things.

But it’s recently come to my attention that most people don’t know how they’re different.

Right now it seems like most people distinguish between “mythology” and “fictional stories featuring the Norse gods” the same way they distinguish between “canon literature” and “fanfiction”—they think of the first as the “original story” and the second as AUs/spinoffs. While they know they’re not dealing with the “canon plotline,” they still think they’re dealing with the “canon characters.”

As a result, people still interpret Marvel’s Loki and Thor as “the same characters” as the gods Loki and Thor, just presented in a non-canon environment.

But this isn’t at all the case, and bear with me because the reason why is going to get a little mind-bendy.

Marvel’s Loki and Thor would only be “the same characters” as the gods Loki and Thor if mythology was literary fiction. But mythology falls in the realm of nonfiction.

It’s nonfiction because its purpose is to convey a culture’s understanding of metaphysical reality. Nearly every culture in the world has developed models for how divine reality works, and conveys these models through storytelling. We call the body of tales that come from this “mythology,” and its purpose is to be a guide to help people make sense of the world.

The fact we subconsciously classify mythology as fiction is why so many of us struggle to view polytheism as legitimate. To get around this, here’s an example of one mythology our culture regularly treats as real: Christian mythology.

The fact we call it “biblical history” doesn’t change the fact it’s mythology. Like all mythology, it uses narratives to convey models related to the world’s creation, the nature of divinity, the layout of the heavens, the divine’s relationship with humanity, and “how we got here” and “where we’re going.” We don’t classify the Bible as “fiction” because its purpose is to be a manual to guide one’s understanding of how things are.

Biblical powers aren’t considered “characters” by Christians because they’re understood to be real phenomena. By the same token, pagan gods aren’t considered “characters” by pagans because they’re understood to be real phenomena.

When people create literary characters based off of divine figures, they do it as a creative exercise. These characters aren’t extensions of their divine counterparts and people from their respective cultures don’t mistake them for such, nor do they use these characterizations to “get to know” their deities. Instead, they use mythology, their practices, and their experiences to do that.

There’s nothing wrong with someone being inspired into paganism because they saw gods and myths depicted in media. But the best thing any pagan can do is dismantle the thing in their brain that tells them “mythology is fiction.” Just getting rid of this one thing will clear up so many legitimacy issues they’d otherwise struggle with.

[rain--goblin]

I've got a bone to pick with Odin only being acknowledged and depicted as a war god.

If you try to find art or statues or information, it's almost completely just that; Hard ass war general.

Wise wanderer is treated as an after thought,

And trickster and god of madness is completely ignored. (And that's not all the roles and titles, I promise)

Maybe I'm just salty cause I'm not dying on a battlefield and instead have my nose in a book and head in the clouds, but seeing the other depictions get ignored is low-key annoying.

Also the "hard ass" part? Listen, my gods he's not that fucking bad. That part is just toxic masculinity propaganda spread by the less savory people who found heathenry. He definitely expects work and effort, and will eventually have you saying "I'm tired of this grandpa!", but he's not as awful as gym bro Pinterest quotes pretend he is.

[skaldish]

To get out of the habit of thinking of the Norse or Irish gods as being "gods of" stuff, try to think about what their occupations are instead.

Are they a chief or a king of something? Are they a protector of humanity? Are they skilled at magic and therefore could be considered a wizard, mage, or magician? Are they a warrior? Are they an entertainer? Are they a teacher?

And if you want to play this on advanced mode: Don't try to define the gods' occupations according to what they do in their myths. Think about what they do in relation to us and our societies right here and now, and in relation to the real world.

[broomsick]

The sea is a temple. The woods are a temple. Your own bedroom is a temple. The world is imbued with the spiritual. Worship is an act, not a place, and it can happen spontaneously, in reaction to the beauty of a moment.

[brigitte-poetry]

I was thinking about controversial it is, even in pagan settings, to worship tricksters like Loki and Sutekh, and I think that I described it pretty well with

"Tricksters are inherently transgressive figures who literally embody what it's like to live in a socially unacceptable or taboo way, which is why members of marginalized communities flock to them while more privileged people find them distasteful. They are the personifications of chaos and social unrest, which includes how much strife surrounds people who are deemed socially unacceptable; they are literally the gods of minorities and people who suffer under bigoted unjust systems.

When tricksters do something bad in a myth, marginalized groups see a complex rebellious figure with their own motives while privileged people see a bad person doing bad things. And when tricksters are punished, privileged people just see a bad guy getting their comeuppence while marginalized groups see the harsh realities of living as a socially unacceptable person.

It's no wonder then that queer people, the mentally ill and other minorities have flocked to Loki's side, since he embodies the realities of their lives, even when others can't understand it."

[vitterdotter]

I don't love the interpretation of Ragnarök as an event that only happens because of Oden's actions to prevent it, that it is only a self-fulfilling prophecy. it is the inevitable final death that will come for us all, and there is no preventing it, just experiencing it. maybe the actions taken to get there might have looked different if Oden hadn't bound Fenrir, but maybe in every variation Fenrir eats the world with his jaws in the earth and sky. something something raging against inevitable death and loss for the sake of surviving, even if survival is not a permanent condition

[mainomais-deactivated20260123]

An amazing way to worship a deity is to embrace how complex they are. Research why that is their domain, why they achieved that epithet, that title. Tap into the unknown parts of the deity, open them up more. Look into what makes them whole, grasp the fragments and piece them together. Take advantage of knowledge and grow closer with them by knowing them.

[aurvandill]

I know that I hung on a windy tree nine long nights, wounded with a spear, dedicated to Óðinn, myself to myself, on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run.

[cheerfulomelette]

Children do not go to Valhalla

I saw one of those "Valhalla does not discriminate against the type of battle you lost" posts go by my dash. I really want to say something but the notes are full of people grieving and saying how much comfort this re-interpretation gave them and I'm not that much of a bastard.

This story of the littlest cancer patient going to Valhalla is kind of upsetting but I struggle to articulate why. It's like Christianity wearing my faith like a costume.

I don't want to call it cultural appropriation because, you know, Norse Paganism/Heathenry/Ásatru is a reconstruction of a dead faith - a (more or less) historically-informed best guess based on scanty surviving evidence (much, if not all, of that Christianised). It's public domain mythology, reuse and remix as you like, etc, etc.

But...

Valhalla is not and has never been a place of rest and healing, and to say it is is to fundamentally misunderstand the mythology. Valhalla is where Odinn is building an army to fight the war at the end of the world. It is not a place for children or victims of domestic violence or cancer patients or anyone like that.

If you're drawn to Norse mythology, if you're grieving and you want to believe that your loved ones are in a better place, let me give you a different story.

It starts with a little girl, a child whom the gods deemed monstrous. Her name is Hela and she's the daughter of Loki, so she every right to claim a home in Ásgard. But, as I said, she was called monstrous for her appearance and her heritage and all but cast out. She was given her own realm, far away from the gods, and tasked with caring for the dead that Odinn (etc) have no use for.

The charge that the gods give this outcast child was considered shit-work. Un-honourable, if not actually dishonourable. An insult for a goddess.

But Hela took that duty with solemnity and made Helheim a home for her wards. It's not a hall full of warriors feasting and drinking and fighting. It's quiet; a rest at the end of a hard life. A place full of children and grandparents, mothers and fathers, farmers and shepherds. You and me.

Helheim, like its mistress, is misunderstood and maligned. When we, who have no place in war, die, Hela will accept us into her hall, care for us, and let us to rest, instead of demanding we keep fighting forever.

It's where most of us will go, and that is not a bad thing. There are no entry requirements. It's not heaven, it's not even The Good Place, it's the default - to be with our people, to be cared for and looked after, to be free from pain and struggle. Helheim is a place of acceptance, care, peace, and rest. It's not paradise, but I don't think it sounds that bad.