The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/asatru/page/18)
WINFIELD, Kan. — On July 23, 2018, nine Ásatrú prisoners in Kansas filed a religious discrimination suit. The named defendants include the Winfield Correctional Facility, the Kansas Department of Corrections, and the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Corrections. The suit also named eight individual guards at the Winfield Correctional Facility. The nine prisoners charged that correctional officers had seized religious and other materials.
Pagan Perspectives
Most places in Iceland pipe their hot water up from springs deep below the ground, the water still smelling strongly of sulfur. It isn’t until almost a week into my trip that I realize sulfur interacts with the metal of my wedding ring. I send my wife a picture. “What a souvenir,” she says. “I don’t think it’ll last.
Pagan Perspectives
Back in 2013 and 2014, when I was getting ready to start gathering sources for my masters’ thesis in Old Norse Religion, I realized something: while the vast majority of medieval Norse-Icelandic sagas were readily accessible in Old Icelandic, quite a few of them were hard to get a hold of in translation. Sure, I could have soldiered on, armed with only my trusty Old Icelandic-English dictionary and go through every single saga in the original language, but it would have taken such a long time that, had I done so, I’d probably still be at it today. What I needed were more general editions and translations, with enough notes and index-entries to quickly find relevant information. When it came to the more popular sagas, such as the so-called “family-sagas” (Íslendingasögur), I had little problem finding good versions. In my excessive exhaustiveness, however, I found a severe lack of material related to the more obscure sagas.
Pagan Perspectives
Over the past year, and especially since the Frith Forge conference in Germany, I’ve noticed increasing use and discussion of the term “inclusive Heathenry.”
It often seems more of a rebranding than a revolutionary concept. Practitioners of Ásatrú and Heathenry have long taken sides over issues of inclusion, with some taking hard stances on either end of the spectrum and many situating themselves in a complicated middle ground. The battles that have raged for so long have been between positions that were often defined by the other side. The universalist position supposedly said that anyone could be Heathen – no questions asked. The folkish position supposedly said that only straight white people could be Heathen – with many questions asked.
Pagan Perspectives
For three days beginning on July 13, Atlanta hosted Mystic South: Theory, Practice, and Play. According to the convention’s Facebook page, the Pagan event “highlights the Southern flair and mystic spirit of our own part of the country.”
Headliners this year included John Beckett, Ivo Dominguez, Yaya Nsasi Vence Guerra, Sangoma Oludoye, Mama Gina, and the Night Travelers. The conference schedule included rituals, workshops, papers, panels, presentations, and a live podcast. Several events centered on Norse material and Heathen religions. To get a sense of the conference from a Heathen perspective, I spoke with Ryan Denison of the Mystic South organizing committee.