The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/neo-volkisch)
Karl E.H. Seigfried reflects on his 15 years of running the popular Norse Mythology Facebook Page and offers advice to new Heathens, including why you shouldn’t advertise your faith like a brand and why you should start making interlibrary loans.
Just as sane people don’t need to embrace the insanity of the Trumpies, Heathens of positive intent don’t need to take on any of the awfulness of the neo-völkisch haters and their ilk. We can make empathy a central point of what we believe and what we practice.
Like a “Sunday Catholic” who is extremely devout on Sunday mornings but lives a decidedly un-Christian life for the rest of the week, we can all too easily make grand speeches over the drinking horn at blót but neglect to put intention into action when we step out into the wider world. Are we honoring the ancestors in our lives? Or are we dishonoring them?
This is why I no longer wear the hammer in public. There’s just too much darkness lurking below the surface, across the board.
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.