ᛉ Sagnamaðr Stark ᛉ

The outfit of a Migration Period nobleman from western Scandinavia, 500AD, by Magnus Hansen. He’s wearing the famous Snartemo band as it was found and would have originally been worn, as a sword baldric.

Julian the Apostate made a few interesting cases for polytheism in Against the Galileans.  He argued that so many peoples having such drastically differing moralities, laws, religions and physical differences as being the work of multiple different gods, as opposed to a common people with different languages, as described in the Tower of Babel story.  He also questioned why if there was only one true god, and he was a jealous god as it says in Exodus, that for centuries, he only spoke to a tribe in the Near East, while allowing other peoples to worship false gods.

What’s interesting with Cicero’s mention of divination as proof of the divine is, in the turbulent periods such as the Migration Period, when warfare was a constant and a bad harvest would be enough to destroy your family’s life, divination wouldn’t have been so universally relied upon if it wasn’t reliably producing actionable results for people. And when you consider the fact that divination and consulting a soothsayer were repeatedly banned in multiple early Christian law codes, it shows that it was important enough to people that they were willing to risk doing it regardless of legality, often truly risking their lives, and it was a persistent enough practice that they failed to ban it for hundreds of years. Divination wasn’t a game.

I’d say this includes the Stark Collection. Every single artifact I acquire, I do so to protect them in a world where our heritage, written and physical, is under attack. I will share them with our Folk and protect them with my life, and only pass them down to someone who will do the same.

- Folkish Summer Hallowing - Irminfolk's new hof - Tom Rowsell's Starting Heathenry course - Norroena Society's Kvasir Academy - Hearthfire Radio - Exiles of the Golden Age conference - Declaration of Tradition Folkish heathens are stacking Ws boys. Universalist wicca fake pagans are clicking "like" on Facebook pages. Folkish real heathens are actually creating institutions and accumulating hard assets.

The Völva’s Prophecy by Knud Baade, 1843. ᚬ

Cases for polytheism… Oddly enough, before I ever read Cicero, I myself made similar arguments to those made in De Natura Deorum. That so many peoples, some related and some unrelated and with very little contact, had a deeply ingrained belief in gods. Many of these gods were similar to those known by other peoples, and many were completely unique to certain peoples. They came by these beliefs, and held to them for centuries, naturally; for argument’s sake I’ve been looking for an example of a forced, coerced, or politically motivated conversion to paganism, but in the Germanic sphere, I couldn’t find one. Blasphemy was severely punished, but in pagan Europe, different religious groups coexisted.  Many of these peoples, related and unrelated, often developed similar methods of contacting and worshipping these gods; such as fire rituals, worshipping at certain bodies of water, shamanic practices, and sacrifices of objects of value. And how does this prove that they’re not just archetypes ingrained into the human subconscious? Our ancestors, as the polytheists of today, clearly believed in metaphysical gods; they wouldn’t have had elaborate gifting rituals in which they offered valuable resources if they didn’t believe they’d ever get anything in return, and didn’t believe these gods were metaphysical and able to intercede in their lives.  Something Cicero cites as an example of visible divine intercession is auguries and prophetic visions granted to priests and shamans by the Gods, which ended up being actionable or later proven true. Unlike individual blessings and UPGs today, this would be visible to multiple people. Today, an example of divine intercession that comes to mind is Kedarnath Temple; when Uttarakhand was struck by flash floods, 92 people took refuge in a temple of Shiva. As the floodwaters surged towards the temple, a boulder rolled down from the mountains, and came to a stop mere feet from the temple, diverting the floodwaters and saving everyone inside. Science can’t explain this one away; with the momentum the boulder was carrying, it should have crushed the temple. It wasn’t an archetype or a metaphor that stopped the boulder that day; it was a god, looking out for his devotees. ⴲ

Bledsian Hāliġmōnaþ! Performed a blót tonight under the rising full moon. Bede called Hāliġmōnaþ a month of sacredness, and as the ninth full moon of the year, it’s a particularly auspicious time to make an offering. ⴲ

This Buddha-smashing video is circulating the web again… Turns out, this self-purported priest, “Pater Kleomenis”, has been disavowed by the Greek Orthodox Church, and is not, and never was, a recognized priest. Basically he’s an internet tough guy who ordered a priest robe from Aliexpress so he could LARP as St. Boniface…but, his iconoclastic fantasies have gotten him arrested for vandalism. Bet you anything he’s one of the types who calls us LARPers.

Thor fighting the Jötnar by Franz Stassen.