Heretical Heathenry
This is the text of a talk I gave on August 24th at Northeast Thing, one of the largest heathen (Norse pagan) gatherings in the United States, archived here for general interest.
I got the idea for this workshop on what I think was the first night of Northeast Thing last year. I was talking to someone about his first time at the Loki blot, when he really came around on the idea that it should be there, counterintuitive to him as it had initially seemed. And this was a thing that meant a lot to me—I’d spoken fairly loudly about his exclusion from the main ritual at the last Thing before the pandemic, pointing out the fact that Loki’s modern veneration is especially common among queer heathens. I had been very hurt by his exclusion there, and what he was saying was healing.
And then a bit later in the conversation he said something about still not understanding people who try to cultivate a personal relationship with Surtr. And I was struck by that, because it felt like exactly the sort of dumbass shit I’d have done at any number of points during my life. I haven’t ever, but it didn’t strike me as particularly weird. Certainly not weirder than working with an angry, wronged trickster burning beneath the world.
And I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about that. I thought about Odin and the way he gathered outsiders around himself, allying with the Vanir after initially warring, or becoming brothers with a giant. I thought about Hél and her brothers, and the fine line between gods and monsters. And what I realized was that there was a really important conversation to have here. Because what the question was really about was heresy.
That’s not a word we really talk about much in Heathenry. But we should. For one thing, that distinction between who is like and not like us is one of the great questions in the lore, on par with “what do I do when my duties conflict.” For another, it’s uniquely important for us to have a notion of heresy within Heathenry. In a world where this happens, (note: this was accompanied by a slide of the so-called “QAnon Shaman” during the January 6th riots) I would go so far as to say it’s a duty.
Now, that’s obviously not a heresy worth discussing, so let’s back up and think about the word itself, if only because I promised some scholarly reputability here. It entered the English language during the thirteenth century, from the Latin hæresis, meaning school of thought, itself from the Greek hairesis, meaning choice. And that highlights a key thing about heresy, which is that it’s deliberate. It’s not simply a religious error, but the conscious adoption of an unacceptable belief. But there’s another key thing about heresy in all of that. If we’re talking about unacceptable belief in the thirteenth century and we’re using English to do it then unacceptable means a very specific thing, which is that the belief is unacceptable to the Roman Catholic Church.…
