Lords Of Steel

July 1st, 2010...Currently seeking individuals interested in forming a viking re-enactment group.

"Christianity has emptied Valhalla, has cut down our sacred groves, has beaten our swords into plowshares, has taught our children that our religious birthright is a shameful superstition, a devilish poison, and has given us instead the culture of a nation whose climate, laws, culture and interests are strange to us, and whose history has no connection with our own.

Long before Christianity took over Europe, there was an organized indigenous religion already there. Ásatrú is indeed the original, or “native,” religion of the peoples who occupied most of Europe. Geographically speaking, on the European continent Ásatrú was practiced from Scandinavia and Britain in the north, down through France and Germany in the south, and to as far east as Russia... When the tribes migrated so did the religion. As an organized religion, Ásatrú seems to be about 8,000 years old.

Before Christianity came to Europe, the religion, culture, and society of the European people all were based around their heathen beliefs. Heathenism was the dominant influence that shaped the people of the rugged lands of Northern Europe.

Ásatrú was then and is now a tribal, or folk religion. As such, it shares much with other indigenous tribal traditions, including those of the Native American Indians. Ásatrú actually has a lot in common with the American Indian religion. Both are tribal, both honor the ancestors, and both have much to teach us about our connection with the natural world around us. Both teach high personal principles... Ásatrú and the way of the Indians are both the indigenous religions of a specific people.

As ancient religion and culture flourished in the tribes of the European forests, the invading Christians first found it opportune to slaughter as many of these tribes as possible. Then the parasitic Christian priests seized control of the remaining people, and crushed the European heathen spirit, just as the noble indian tribes of North America were systematically crushed if they did not subject themselves to the way of life and religion of the Christian invaders.

When the Christian conquistadors invaded America, they thought that their faith was superior to the one of the Aztec and Maya civilizations. Gold religious artifacts were melted down to make money, scriptures were burned, native peoples were enslaved and forced to live according to the ways of the invaders.

This is the very same thing that has happened to our people when Europeans were invaded by Christianity: our ancestors’ religion was outlawed, our places of worship were destroyed, those who knew our old ways were murdered and those who wanted to learn from them were punished or also murdered.

People who resisted the new Christian religion were tortured and executed. Every form of resistance throughout the course of history was violently repressed — I can for instance name the witch hunts and the Inquisition when thousands of people were brutally murdered in a holocaust organized by the Christian church.

The Ásatrú religion was also subjected to a violent campaign of repression over a period of hundreds of years. Countless thousands of our people were murdered or maimed in the process. However, the common European folk did not give up their cherished beliefs quickly or easily. The truth is, you can never strip the beliefs from a people of honor, and Ásatrú was merely suppressed rather than annihilated. Therefore, today it is definitely not some “New Age” religion. Many followers of Ásatrú known today as Ásatrúers or Ásatrúars call themselves Heathens in memory and in honor of the ancestors that preferred to die rather then be converted to Christianity.

It was the monolithic organization of the Christian Church, bolstered by threats of economic isolation and aided by conversion of the ruling classes, that eventually triumphed over all the European people.

Or so it seemed... Despite all the persecution, elements of Ásatrú continued down to our times — often in the guise of folklore — proving that our own native religion appeals to our innermost beings in a fundamental way. Ásatrú never really quite died out.

Now, more than a thousand years after its supposed demise, it is alive and growing. Indeed, so long as there are men and women of European race, it cannot really die because it springs from the soul of our people. Ásatrú isn’t just what we believe, it’s what we are.

Ásatrúers agree on certain basic tenets and beliefs, but after that they are free to interpret their religion in their own way and practice it, within certain parameters, accordingly. Unlike most religions, there is no “politically correct” way of thinking. Individuals within Ásatrú are free — physically, mentally and spiritually. This is why Ásatrú is unlike the better-known religions in many ways.

First of all, while most “modern” religions are monotheistic (one god), Ásatrú has a wide pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. It is a polytheistic religion. The Ásatrú pantheon of deities consists of many Gods and Goddesses, whom Ásatrúers view as sources of inspiration and knowledge.

Followers of Ásatrú do not actually pray to their Gods and Goddesses the way most people mean by the word. Ásatrúers never surrender their will or humble themselves before Gods and Goddesses, because we see ourselves as their kin, not as their property. Nor do Ásatrúers beg and plead. They do not approach their Gods and Goddess’ on bended knee. Our deities need us as much as we need them. It is a union of honor...

Heathens do not worship, but follow the old Norse Gods. The term worship implies that one being is higher then another and that is not the relationship that the Ásatrúers have with their Gods. Many of the Nordic Gods have a flaw, if you will, (Tyr is missing one hand, Odin is missing one eye and so on.) they are neither omniscient nor perfect. The Gods are said to come to Midgard (earth) and ask for the help of humans on many occasions. Thus, Heathens look up to, work along side of and commune with their Gods.

Yes, our Gods are fallible. They make mistakes, and they can also die. But are they inferior? Not at all, our gods are not static deities, they learn and grow just as we do. This is the strength of a living religion.

Ásatrúers commune with the Gods and Goddesses, and honor them while seeking their blessing, through formal rites (Blots and Sumbles) as well as through informal meditation. Ásatrúers consider the Gods to be friends, albeit powerful ones, and so Ásatrúers gather on their holy days to commune with the Gods. Again, they do so as friends — they don’t bow down to the deities because Ásatrú is not a fear based religion. Ásatrúers stand strong in the face of their Gods.

Ásatrú also holds a belief in various other land spirits and a reverence of ancestors. There exists a realm wherein dwell the Gods and Goddesses of our ancestors. These are those whom Ásatrúers honor, and interact with today in ceremony, via personal gnosis and through living honorable and worthy lives. Ásatrúers believe that these Beings reflect aspects of Nature, both internal to ourselves and external in the widest sense of the word. Ásatrúers believe that the Gods care for us, as we do them and that they are interdependent with us — that we affect them, and they affect us. Ásatrúers believe in standards of behavior which are consistent with the spiritual truths expressed through the Gods, and which are harmonious with our deepest being.

Actually, living a full and virtuous life is like a form of prayer itself. The Ásatrú religion affects all aspects of people’s lives, not just some fragments that they choose to call “religious.” These principles that Ásatrúers live by differ from the monotheistic religions in many respects.

While individual Christians may honestly believe in freedom, they all are slaves to their Almighty God. Judeo-Christian scriptures say all people are subject to the Will of their God — upon penalty of everlasting torture for refusal.

There is no concept of a “savior” in Ásatrú. No one that you have to confess your “sins” to... Ásatrúers believe that you are responsible for your own actions, and there is no “the devil-made-me-do-it” type attitude.

The whole Christian concept of mankind is dominated by the concept of sin. Not the good and positive aspects of man are put in the foreground but his guilt (whatever this may be). In my opinion, this concept of sin is very much suited for the manipulation of people — as long as they are being told that they must repent of something they have not really done. The Christian concept of sin is truly, in all senses, an instrument of exploitation.

Guilt is indeed an immensely powerful weapon. If you can make a person feel guilty, make them feel that there is something wrong with her or him, you have gained a psychological ascendancy over that person. Guilt is a weapon often used on psychologically vulnerable people.

The Christian churches have produced not only the concept of a God of absolute goodness (whatever that might mean) but also his son, a “man-god,” someone like us, human beings, but also terribly unlike us in his perfection and this man-god is placed before believers as an example of what they must be... As counterparts to these rules, to fortify still further people’s sense of unworthiness, are such rituals as the confession and litany in the Catholic church, in which believers must grovel on their knees and murmur “Oh Lord have mercy upon us miserable sinners”... What better way could be devised to make a person vulnerable to control?

Religious Christian people are almost always people with a high component of guilt and anxiety for they can never, in the very nature of things, live up to the “perfection” that is demanded of them.But above all, Judeo-Christian religion in society today is used to keep people in a state of guilt, to mystify, to bamboozle, so that reality and myth, symbol and fact are all brought together in a veritable quagmire of mental and emotional contradictions, so that people are uncertain even about who they really are. Indeed, Christian religion today might be called the ideology of confusion.

What better weapon could those who want to control us have? It is highly important for those who want to maintain the society as it is to prevent people from seeing and dealing with the realities of their conditions, for if they did so they would at once take steps to alter them.

It is not this world that matters, Christians are told; real life, the life of joy and happiness comes when we are dead — but only if we remain docile and obedient (“blessed are the meek”) in this life. “Blessed are the poor.” The poor are extremely fortunate to be poor — for they will inherit everything, the whole earth — after they are dead... What a load of nonsense!

Is it a wonder that so much effort, time and money goes into the religion business? The rhetoric of Judeo-Christian religion is also calculated to evoke deeply embedded responses — words such as “kindliness,” “goodwill,” “non-violence,” “love”... These words blunt the consciousness and obscure the need for action to secure change.

No, for Ásatrúers there is no such a things as “guilt before God.” Of course, there are good and bad deeds but they are not being judged by God but by the community of human beings. Acting against the community or social order would possibly be called bad or dishonorable. But even in this case it must be checked why that individual acted like this and what the motives were.

Good and evil are not constants. What is good in one case will not be good in another, and evil in one circumstance will not be evil under a different set of conditions. In any one instance, the right course of action will have been shaped by the influence of the past and the present. The result may or may not be “good” or “evil,” but it will still be the right action. In no case should good and evil be dictated to us by the edicts of some alien, authoritarian deity, such as in Judeo-Christianity. We should use our freedom, responsibility, and awareness of duty to serve the highest and best ends.

Some of the qualities Ásatrúers hold in highest regard are strength, courage, joy, honor, freedom, loyalty to kin, realism, vigor, and the revering of our ancestors. To express these things in our lives is virtuous, and so we should strive to do this. Their opposites — weakness, cowardice, adherence to dogma rather than to the realities of the world, and the like — constitute vices and are to be avoided. Proper behavior in Ásatrú consists of maximizing one’s virtues and minimizing one’s vices. This code of conduct reflects the highest and most heroic ideals of our people.

Judeo-Christianity teaches a complete rejection of other religions and a duty to convert others, which has more often than not been done by force. There was actually no history of religious warfare in Europe before the coming of Christianity, nor did the native Indians engage in warfare over religious beliefs.

Asatrú does not claim to hold the universal truth or to be a universal religion, a faith for all of humankind. In fact, Ásatrúers don’t think such a thing is possible. The followers of Ásatrú don’t believe that there is such thing as “One True Religion for Everybody.” They are convinced that ethnic ancestral religions that were built by and for various ethnic peoples, are the most suitable ones — these are manifestations of the inner self of every person, and an expression of their collective subconscious. The various branches of humanity have different ways of looking at the world, each of which is valid for them, and thus naturally should have different religions, which of course they do, or at least did...

Ásatrúers believe that each religion reflects the culture of the region in which it was created, that the beliefs of a culture represent the values and ethics of its people (the German term “volkisch” represents this vision). Each culture is unique and so each religion is or should be unique to its people and therefore not transposable from one group to another. Because of this, people of Northern European origins should practice Ásatrú those of Celtic origin should practice Celtic heathenism and so on. Our ancestors were polytheists and therefore Judeo-Christianity being a monotheist religion, having its roots in the desert, is an aberration for a race that has its origins in the forests of Europe.

Christians may accept that joy is good, but their teachings burden them with guilt because of some imaginary “original sin” or other failings. They perhaps would like to understand the real world on a pragmatic basis, from verifiable evidence, yet they are told to suspend any critical thought and believe dogmas — black is white, round is flat, and natural instincts are evil — without question when the teachings of their church conflict with reason or with known facts about the nature of the world (“you must have faith”)...

Ásatrúers do not accept the idea of “original sin,” the notion that we are tainted from birth and intrinsically bad, as does Judeo-Christianity. Thus, people do not need “saving” and there is no need to ask forgiveness to be redeemed or else face an eternity burning in hell.

The whole concept of an eternal afterlife of suffering is alien to indigenous European religious thought. Why should one fear the afterlife? Everyone makes mistakes, but it’s how we deal with them that is important. We don’t ask our deities to forgive us, instead, we should try to learn from our mistakes and live our lives as honorably as possible. If we live life fully (not to be confused with frivolously), continually strive for self improvement, and learn from all the obstacles we face in life, we will be prepared for whatever afterlife we earn.