I’m slowly recovering from an absolutely magical Northeast Thing (NET) 2023. If last year was about rekindling the fires of faith and cracking open the seed of change, this year saw that seed burst the rest of the way into the light and blossom.

I describe NET as “the center of my religious calendar,” but it’s not just about the devotional aspects of religion. NET is a powerful space for me, where our gods feel more present, easier to reach. It offers the opportunity for intensive spiritual and magical work, and a wider array of people to do that work with than I tend to have the rest of the year. It gives me the opportunity to ‘check my answers’ against a community of like-minded people. And while I am not (and may never be) ready to go into a lot of detail about that work on a public website, it has fueled a foundational change in my understanding of myself.

[Content Warning: this post depicts and discusses symbols that are widely used by racist people and organizations. At Freyja’s Kiss, we do not condone these usages or these people. Rather, we condemn them in the strongest terms. May they find no frið or succor wherever they may go.]

Heathenry, Ásatrú, Forn Siðr. Whatever you want to call it, our faith has a problem with far-right extremism. Of course, it is far from the only religion with such a problem, but ours is substantial. For someone who is interested in learning more about heathenry, who feels newly called by our gods, it can be difficult at times to sort out which groups are hiding hate under a veneer of “heritage”. Many of them have learned to couch their language very carefully, to expose a “community-friendly” exterior that masks bigotry.

As a result, a newcomer to heathenry runs the risk of ending up quite steeped in bigoted ideology, either becoming indoctrinated themselves or (quite understandably, at that point) abandoning the religion entirely.

I almost didn’t attend the Northeast Thing¹ this year. The 2019 version of the event was catalyzing and meaningful to me, but it also surfaced some issues that eventually led me to, for lack of a better turn of phrase, a crisis of faith. Not faith in the gods (that’s pretty unshakeable) nor even faith in the community (no community is perfect, but this one is certainly doing better than most) but faith in myself; in my ability to embody the values and beliefs that I actually hold sacred. And so this blog fell by the wayside, I mostly stopped holding blóts for my family, and I fell into a rather long and severe depressive episode.

So between all of that, the fact that the rest of my family declined to attend, and worries about COVID, I was going to let the event pass by. But a couple of friends were attending, they required proof of vaccination, it was largely outdoors… and perhaps most importantly, after 2019 I had intended to return with a very specific offering to Sigyn. So, I went.

I have a self-sabotaging tendency toward perfectionism. After founding this blog, I had ideas for a half dozen posts, wrote a few words of each of them, and then became paralyzed with indecision - is this an interesting enough topic to write about? Am I the right person to write it? A lot of unnecessary agonizing over something that barely anyone is going to read anyway. And so this blog became defunct quite quickly, ensuring that no one would read it.

[This post is from new guest contributor Elizabeth Sandifer, who writes over at Eruditorum Press. She is the author of the bestselling Neoreaction a Basilisk, a book on contemporary neo-nazi movements and philosophy.]

Those who have followed the news recently may have seen a few stories about an asshole named Richard Holzer who was planning on blowing up a synagogue in Colorado. You may also have seen some of the photos in which Holzer was pictured wearing a Mjolnir pendant, or the detail of the FBI report that described this pendant as a white supremacist symbol. This set off a round of recriminations that were as predictable as they were tedious as numerous heathens began complaining that it’s wrong to treat Mjolnir as a hate symbol. The biggest statement came from The Troth via Heathens Against Hate, its group that nominally combats extremism, but that in practice mostly seems to issue statements like this:

The Troth strongly condemns anyone who would want to prohibit the free exercise of religion by use of terrorism. While Mr. Holzer might wear the emblem of Heathenry, he does not hold the values of inclusive Heathenry or organizations such as the Troth, and its programs such as Heathens Against Hate. Everyone deserves to worship in the way they choose without fear of harm coming to them. We offer our support and thoughts to Temple Emanuel and are grateful for the FBI agents who worked to prevent what could have been a tragedy.  

The Troth also strongly opposes the statement made in the FBI affidavit stating Mr. Holzer had received “various white supremacy paraphernalia as gifts for the UCs, including a flag, several patches, a metal Thor’s hammer and a mask.” The Thor’s Hammer, also known as a Mjolnir, is a sacred symbol in our religion, and worn by Heathens across the world. It is not a symbol of hate, but symbol of those of us who are of the Heathen faith.

I am Heathen. By this, I mean that my religion is a (fairly loose) reconstruction of the religions that were practiced across Germania, Scandinavia, and the British Isles from sometime before the years 500 CE to about 1100 CE or so.¹ This religion is also referred to as Ásatrú.² I use both to refer to my spiritual beliefs, although I tend to default to “Heathen.”³ All of which is a long-winded way of saying I pray to Freyja, Thor, Odin, and their kin.

Of course, I also believe the things that science says. I believe that the universe is 14 billion years old, that natural universal processes formed the stars and planets, that biodiversity is the result of evolution. And as I tend to hang out in communities with strong atheist and anti-theist sentiments, a question I’ve been asked more than a few times is: how do I reconcile religious faith with scientific skepticism?

East Coast Thing 2019 was a transformative experience for me. In the wake of that, I felt inspired to start writing down some of my thoughts about the gods, community, my beliefs, and belief and religion more generally. This is where I will do that.