Ásatrú and Hinduism: Art and Practice

In a little corner of the San Diego Museum of Art, back behind the exciting collections of enormous modernist paintings, hidden away where the casual visitor may completely miss it, in a small room dedicated to “Arts of South & Southeast Asia,” there’s a tiny display on “Hinduism & Hindu Art.”

For practitioners of Ásatrú and Heathenry – for those who practice the Old Way of Odin, Thor, Freyja, and the other powers – the short paragraph introducing the exhibit immediately brings interreligious connections to mind.

Hinduism is based on the notion that souls are locked in an endless cycle of rebirth until release from the cycle is attained by one’s own actions and beliefs, aided by worship of and close personal connection to a deity. In Hindu belief there are numerous gods, but the principal male deities are Shiva and Vishnu. Shiva is considered the creator of life, but he is also the destroyer of evil forces. Vishnu embodies the qualities of mercy and goodness, and he is the savior of man and preserver of the universe. The Great Goddess is the counterpart to these male figures, and she appears in many guises, some nurturing, some fierce and destructive.

Of course, there is not one-to-one, perfect correspondence with Norse and Germanic cosmology. However, there are enough parallels to get a bookish Heathen like me to stop and consider.

While Old Norse religion as we know it didn’t have the goal of release from the cycle of rebirth, there is some evidence for concepts of cyclical time and reincarnation. Völuspá (“Prophecy of the Seeress”), the central surviving poem of the faith as practiced in pagan Iceland, begins and ends with a new earth rising from the waters and bursting green with new life as young gods begin their golden age. The Poetic Edda, the core collection of Old Icelandic poetry, includes references to the rebirth of heroes and Valkyrie lovers who return to love again.

Hinduism and Ásatrú share the concept of “numerous gods.” It’s best not to push the parallels to these particular Hindu deities too far, but Odin is both a “creator of life” and “destroyer of evil forces.” Thor does famously show mercy to an offending human farmer’s family in the myth of his goats being eaten, and he is clearly the god dedicated to protecting humanity and preserving the human and divine worlds. The goddess Freyja is a powerful counterpart to Odin and does indeed appear in guises both nurturing and frightening.

The items on display in the miniature exhibit likewise tantalize the comparative imagination and suggest what for many may be new ways of relating to the Ásatrú deities and new modes of engaging with our own practice.

Shiva and Odin, image and ritual

The caption accompanying a 14th-century Southern Indian granite statue that the museum calls Shiva as divine teacher includes this description:

Shiva is recognizable by the third eye in his forehead and the small snake, skull, and crescent moon that appear in his hair locks. Shiva sits teaching an unseen group of sages, with one of his feet resting on a dwarf representing ignorance.

Odin could likewise be called “divine teacher,” since he is the one who shares his mystically gathered knowledge of runes with humans and inspires our creativity via the Mead of Poetry. He may not have a third eye, but he is marked by the single eye left after giving up its partner for a drink from the Well of Wisdom. As with Shiva, the imagery refers to mystical knowledge, to sight beyond sight. By giving up a physical eye, Odin gains a more powerful and penetrating vision into deeper reality – a Heathen concept of heightened vision that parallels the Hindu one.

The dwarf representing ignorance is a possible parallel for Litr (“color”), the mysterious dwarf who appears at the god Baldr’s funeral. As Thor is hallowing the funeral pyre with his sacred hammer Mjölnir, the dwarf runs “before his feet,” and the thunderer kicks him “with his foot” to thrust him into the fire. There’s no explanation of who this dwarf is or what he represents in Norse mythology, but – in light of the Hindu image – it may be helpful to think of him as a symbol of ignorance, particularly ignorance of proper religious ritual.

A 6th-century Western Indian sandstone statue, titled Shiva as Lord of Music, is described by the museum:

This sculpture is the earliest known representation of the god Shiva in his incarnation as Lord of Music, the deity who marks the cosmic cycles of time with his music. Shiva’s four arms indicate his superhuman power, and the halo encircling his head further emphasizes his divinity.

With his lower two arms Shiva plays the vina, a traditional Indian stringed instrument, and the graceful thrust and counterthrust of his body follows from Indian dance poses. His gaze is directed downward and he smiles gently as he is lost in the joy of sound.

Odin’s “superhuman power” isn’t indicated in old northern images by haloes, but there is a mysterious triple triangle that floats over Odinic figures in surviving stone carvings. It has been interpreted in the past as symbolically signifying the god’s mystic power to bind and unbind, both figuratively and literally.

Although not an instrumentalist, Odin is documented as a singer of songs. The Icelandic antiquarian Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241) tells us that Odin spoke always in verse, and verse was sung in the olden times. In the Old Icelandic poem Hávamál (“Sayings of the High One”), Odin himself brags about the powers of the eighteen magical songs he knows. Taken together with Odin’s gift of inspiration via the Mead of Poetry, Odin – like Shiva – seems a proper god for creatives to call upon during these days of surging artificial intelligence creeping into our livelihoods.

The idea of the inspirer gazing downwards also appears in the Norse poems, as when Odin tells us of his self-hanging from the World Tree and peering down to seize the runes, and when the Valkyrie Sigrdrífa (“victory driver”) reports that Odin stands upon a cliff holding the head of the decapitated Mímir as it speaks of the same runes, the “true letters.”

The concept of the mystical severed head also appears in the San Diego exhibit, in text attached to a sandstone Architectural fragment with the image of Ganesh from Northwestern India in the 11th century.

Ganesh is considered the Lord of Auspicious Beginnings who is honored at the beginning of any new venture. He sits on his mount, the rat. In his hands he holds a bowl of sweets and an ax.

Ganesh was the child of Parvati, born while Parvati’s husband Shiva was away. Upon the god’s return home, Ganesh blocked Shiva’s entrance and the furious Shiva cut off the boy’s head. Parvati demanded that Shiva make the boy whole; rushing into the forest, Shiva encountered an elephant whose head he removed and placed on Ganesh’s body.

For modern Heathens interested in Germanic concepts and rituals of “Auspicious Beginnings,” Jacob Grimm’s monumental Teutonic Mythology records a treasure trove of folk beliefs and practices that lasted into his own 19th century. Whether or not today’s academics subscribe to his pet theories doesn’t negate the interest of the material he records for today’s practitioners. In Thor’s Oak Kindred, we’ve adapted some of the rites recorded by Grimm into our own practice of progressive Ásatrú.

An 11th-century bronze statue from South India is given the title Sambandar, Child Saint devoted to Shiva. The museum caption explains:

Sambandar was a saint who probably lived in the seventh century AD. At the age of three, he was left outside the gates of a temple, and when he cried out for his parents, the god Shiva and his consort Parvati appeared in response. From that moment, Sambandar spent his life as a devotee of Shiva, composing hymns of praise in his honor.

Here Sambandar is shown dancing in devotional ecstasy. The loops in the sides of his pedestal would have held supports for this image when it was dressed and decked with flower garlands on festival days.

Both ancient and modern Heathens have been dedicated to individual gods of the so-called Norse pantheon, venerating a particular deity as their prime devotional figure. Sambandar’s composition of praise hymns in honor of Shiva is a wonderful model. If the Heathens of long ago could compose such powerful and lasting poems in praise of the gods, why can’t we? There’s definitely place for more well-written veneration pieces in Ásatrú.

Sambandar’s dance of devotion likewise provides a prompt for today’s Heathens to utilize all the performing arts in celebration of their faith – not only words and music. The decoration of sacred statues is also documented in the old Germanic paganism and is something that can easily be incorporated into modern practice by those who aren’t already doing so.

Goddesses and temples

From Central India between 750 and 800, a sandstone depiction of four figures that the museum curators call The Mother Goddesses is described like this:

This panel once included seven Hindu goddesses known as the “seven mothers” who embody the energies of male gods to whom they are linked. From left to right are Indrani, associated with the god Indra, holding a thunderbolt and sitting on an elephant; Kumari, the counterpart of Skanda (Kumara), holding a spear and sitting on a peacock; Varahi, associated with Vishnu as the boar-headed Varaha, holding a skullcap and sitting on a buffalo; and Chamunda (with no male counterpart) holding a skullcap and a trident and sitting on a corpse.

Modern Heathens who have studied ancient Germanic paganism beyond the Icelandic sources know about the worship of the Germanic mothers – the matronae (“matrons”) that appear on well over a thousand votive stones and altars that have been found throughout the areas reached by Germanic legionaries in the Roman armies. In his Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Austrian scholar Rudolf Simek writes that the mother-deities are usually portrayed in

frontal depictions of them, almost exclusively in threes, either standing or sitting, with at least one of them having a basket of fruit on her lap. Sometimes the middle one is shown to be a maiden with loosened hair wearing a headband, whereas the headdresses of the other two suggest married women.

In both the Hindu and Heathen carvings, the goddesses appear with and without male connection. Perhaps surprisingly to the subset of modern Heathens that embrace a macho imagining of Viking religion, it was male Germanic warriors who were so dedicated to venerating these female deities wherever their military travels took them. For all of us, it is good to expand our gendered concepts of religion, especially in relation to divinity.

It should be unsurprising to any Heathen today that the Hindu goddesses hold mystical weapons, are associated with animals, and are connected to death. The Norse goddess Freyja can be found on the battlefield, rides the glowing golden boar Hildisvíni (“battle swine”), and presides over a Valhalla-like hall for dead warriors in the divine realms of Asgard. While sexuality is clearly part of both the Hindu and Heathen goddesses, the Norse divine women are much more than the merely sexy Viking babes in battle bikinis that appear in the contemporary fantasy art embraced by some modern practitioners.

The San Diego exhibit also includes a Sculptural panel from a temple made of schist in Eastern India in the 10th century:

These nine figures represent nine heavenly bodies and come from a temple that must have been founded on a day when the stars and planets were properly aligned. This was thought to be important for the efficacy of the site as a place of worship. The figures that appear are, from left to right: The Sun, holding to full lotuses; the Moon holding a [non-Christian] rosary and a water pot with the elixir of immortality; Mars; Mercury; Jupiter; Venus; Saturn; Rahu, Demon of Eclipses, holding the crescent moon; and Comet.

Nine is consistently the magical and meaningful number in Norse mythology, and there are sacred sites across the northern world that show connection to solar, lunar, and stellar calendars. When setting up our own modern sacred spaces, we can deepen our connection to past practice by considering these connections to what flies above.

Unlike the Hindu and Greek mythologies, the Norse does not have an “elixir of immortality.” The analogue is the Mead of Poetry, which is fitting, for Odin teaches us in Hávamál that it is through our deeds that we live on – and glorious deeds are recorded in poetry and song.

Today’s Heathens are well-aware of the interpretatio Romana through which indigenous deities (and the planets associated with them) are overwritten with the names of their Roman counterparts. In the Hindu temple panel, the monstrous moon-chasing Rahu stands out and is the clear parallel to the Norse wolf Hati (“hate”) who pursues Máni (“moon”) across the sky. We can always use more inspired artworks from Heathen perspectives that incorporates our own modern theological concepts while connecting them to ancient imagery.

Finally, there is a photograph by the British Samuel Bourne of Tanjore, Temple of Soubramanya, taken around 1869 in Tamil Nadu, India. It stands proudly against a pale sky, with steps leading the devout upwards into an imposing structure absolutely covered in figuration and religious iconography.

Even today, every scale of devotional space can be found in India, from the humblest home shrine to the most massively overwhelming carved temple. Here in the United States, Heathens tend to the humbler end of the scale as they arrange figurines on bookshelves or build small altars outside. Yet, aside from the obvious financial burden, there is no real reason not to work towards more impressive structures – as we have recently seen with the new Ásatrú temple in Iceland.

Sharing naan and breaking bread

Hinduism has evolved over the past 4,000+ years, from early roots in the Indus Valley Civilization through the diversity of today’s beliefs and practices. Unlike northern Europe, India did not have a sweeping Christian conversion and eradication of native religions. Instead, it faced a variety of incoming religions and internal movements, adapting and adjusting in rejection or adoption of their disparate concepts and practices. Unlike Ásatrú – a new religious movement begun in Iceland in 1972 that seeks to revive, reconstruct, and reimagine the ancient polytheism of Northern Europe that disappeared for nearly a thousand years – Hinduism has an uninterrupted saga of growth, development, rethinking, and reformation.

Here is the lesson. Without positive action, comparative mythology is (at best) a dry academic amusement and (at worst) an exercise in colonialist cultural appropriation. Rather than taking from Hinduism and calling it Heathenry, I suggest that we learn from a closely related tradition that has much to teach us. In Hinduism, we have a living religion that can both provide us with wider contexts for the fragmentary Germanic sources and show us possible paths along which Heathenry may have traveled without the conquering Christian interference in its development.

As Ásatrú and Heathenry have developed over the past half-century, practitioners have incorporated elements from Wiccan, Neopagan, New Age, völkisch, Third Reich, and white nationalist sources. I have repeatedly met modern Heathens blissfully unaware that their runic practice is based more in Nazi occultism than in Old Norse religion, not realizing that the spiritual concepts they embrace originated in the turn-of-the-last-century German racialist mystic milieu, was revived by neo-völkisch racists, and was whitewashed by “inclusive” Heathen organizations in the United States. Many likewise don’t realize that some core religious beliefs of today’s practice come from dated academic theories within Scandinavian studies that have already been rejected by modern scholars (themselves often overtly hostile to the entire project of modern Heathenry). When shown the (sometimes gross) modern origins of their supposedly ancient beliefs and practices, these Heathens can retreat into fierce denial or abject depression.

There is another way. Rather than chasing the above list of suspicious sources, hoping to glean some nugget of insight into ancient practice, we can turn to the textual and visual sources of Hinduism from the ancient past to our own times. Where our Old Norse sources may have one half-verse from one poet on a given concept, Hindu sources have entire bookshelves dedicated to examining that same issue from multiple viewpoints. Where northern European archaeology has uncovered a figurine that may be Thor or merely a gaming piece, India has a nearly unimaginable plethora of artistic representations of even the smallest characters of myth and religion.

Even better, we can turn away from the tainted texts of modern American Heathenry, full as they are of overt or coded old Nazi and neo-Nazi materials. We can deny the old guard of neo-völkisch Heathens their continuing influence in front of the cameras and behind the scenes in Ásatrú and Heathenry. Instead of compromising our ideals and saying, “sure, this organization has some sketchy white nationalist dudes in it, but at least they accept my personal identity and veneration preferences,” we can have deep conversations with our Hindu neighbors and learn what those who have spent their lives practicing a cousin tradition have to teach us.

I’d rather share naan with Hindu friends than break bread with Heathen racists.

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