Hearthside

If you have been a Heathen for any length of time you probably are familiar with the concept of guilt culture vs. shame culture. The argument is that Christianity is a guilt culture, which means people internalize and self-regulate their behaviours based on whether or not they think they are living up to the standards of the broader community. (Even if their own assessment of this is not true.) The downfall of this is if you have any level of perfectionism or anxiety then you are beating yourself up a lot unnecessarily for things that everyone else probably doesn’t care about. Heathenry by contrast, is a shame culture, which means we rely on our community to tell us if we have misstepped and how to correct it. On the surface, you may think of public shaming as someone in stocks, getting rotten tomatoes thrown at them and this may seem unappealing. However, this is not how it is meant to be. The idea of shame culture is that it actually allows the individual a lot of extra freedom becau...

It has been a very different Summer so far compared to last year. Here it has been very wet and rainy unlike the drought conditions of last year. Everything is a verdant green. It is easy to get caught up in the moment this time of year. It feels like even though you are looking outwards the pace slows to a crawl. It is okay to just sit on a riverbank lost in contemplation, or sit out on a patio with a cool drink and some watermelon and talk through the afternoon and late into the evening. I always find it easy to write about Jol or Sigrblot. I would find it easy to write about Winter Nights as well, but I always get so busy that time of year it is hard to find the time. Right now though, I want to write about Midsummer … and it just won’t flow. I have all these ideas in my head, all these sources piled beside me that I keep looking at over and over. The words don’t want to jump to the page as I type. So here goes nothing… There are 3 Heathen holidays attested to in the sources: Sigrbl...

Apart from moving I have had another project in the works. I have been asked countless times by various people to publish a book of my poetry.  Pro-tip: Publishers hate poetry anthologies! As a result I went the route of self-publishing through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. Initially I intended to only publish as an e-book, but with a few more hours of work reformatting I was able to create a paperback addition as well. (And with a few small tweaks I will also have a hardcover, although that is limited-market and includes the USA, but not Canada. I am sorry, but I don’t make the rules in this case.) My book is entitled Frost and Sun: An Anthology of Nature’s Voices . Why should you buy my book? I am not going to suggest it supports my blog, because really my profit margin on this is very small. No, instead I would like to offer that you will probably enjoy it. Frost and Sun is a collection of 30 poems that follow the changes of seasons in the cycle of the year on the Canadian ...

I find it fascinating how many people are really interested in Land-taking and Hallowing rites but know nothing about them. I first read about them in The Tradition of Household Spirits by Claude Lecouteaux, but there are many books that talk about them. There are actually examples of Land-taking and Land Hallowing in the Landnámabók . The basic premise of a Land-taking is to let the landwights know that you are taking stewardship of the land. I say “stewardship” very pointedly. You aren’t just taking the land, you are agreeing to take responsibility for the land. You have to take care of the parcel of land you take. If you don’t you will see the landwights encroaching back into that space. Even so, they may try from time to time. The most common elements of a land-taking are to walk (usually sunwise) around the boundary (in a process called circumambulation) of the piece of land you wish to take stewardship of and declaring to the wights your intentions to take stewardship of the lan...