Attracting Women to the Rite – Some considerations.

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By Eowyn OR As a revolutionary organisation operating within the context of a modern universalist culture, the OR faces many challenges to not only sustain folkish ways, but also to build towards a better future for its people with an infrastructure that honours multiversal values. Amongst the most pressing challenges we face is that of attracting more women into the Rite. This is not merely an exercise in building numbers, nor even about trying to have equal numbers of each sex (as desirable as this might be); it is about a fundamental balancing of the energies that create the matrix on which the Rite's activities are woven.

Rites of Passage: Initiation as a Developmental Tool

by Katia Puryear As a student of ancient ethnological systems and religions, I have noticed various institutions successfully utilized by tribal cultures in raising children to become mature, competent adults. One of these, and probably the most important, is the use of initiations, also called Rites of Passage among coming-of-age ceremonies, which are still used among various indigenous people around the world today.

The Subversion of Perception

It can often be a source of frustration and disillusion when our non-Odinist acquaintances just don't seem to see things as clearly as we ourselves do. We know instinctively that we are right so why do they have this mental blockage to their own inherent knowledge?

Odinic Values in Family Life & Personal Relationships

Once again it is important I believe for us to go right back to basic principles if we are to understand fully the function which marriage fulfils in society since it is clearly not simply a question of procreation.

True Leadership is Needed

IN these modern times when people feel alienated, oppressed, divorced from their rulers and have no control of their own lives, it is very easy to heap the blame upon those in positions of power and then extend this to all forms of leadership and authority. This is the case now, when anarchists and egalitarian politicians come out of the woodwork to spur people on to rebel against all forms of authority and order. But is leadership to blame?

LAW, JUSTICE, FREEDOM

AS A PEOPLE we are noted for our law-abiding qualities or recognition of the need for order. As Odinists we realise even more the need for order if we are to flourish. Nature is ordered, a fact which escapes many hippy-type heathens. If order breaks down chaos descends. So what is order?

The Ancestors

Honouring the ancestors, and an awareness of ancestors, is an important part of Odinism. It includes one's ancestors who are known and those who are not known, it includes the Disir and the Folk Mothers, and it also includes the High Heroes of the Folk. To the Odinist the deceased members of the tribe are as real and as present as the ones who are living. Often I am surprised at how few toasts I hear to the ancestors. Perhaps, then, this is a timely article.

CONTINUING TRADITION

As is known, our blood ancestors passed on the bulk of their wisdom and knowledge by word of mouth. Deep wisdom was relayed from generation to generation in this way, sometimes by direct instruction, often in tales, myths, and legends.

Community: A Lesson from our Saxon Ancestors

Today we hear a lot about the 'community'. In most cases this is a corruption of the term, for it has little to do with the majority of the indigenous population, but is either a way of setting up 'experts' over us, to reduce our power to run our own affairs in ways best suited to us - hence the legion of 'community officers' - or else it is basically a code-name to give special categories special status or rights not given to the majority.

A Woman’s Place

IT HAS been said that Norse paganism is very patriarchal, giving rule and stress to the male in society and worship involved which mostly deals with Odin, Thor, Balder, Frey, etc.... But many fail to realise that the goddesses of the Aesir and Vanir played an important part in the life and worship of the Scandinavian peoples.

Reinstituting the Sacred: Cycles and Resonance in Our Lives

A talk by Eowyn OR at the 2004 Great Moot Last year, we considered the importance of rites of passage in our lives and the way in which they align our whole being in accordance with Natural Law, thus enabling us to skilfully navigate our…

Let’s Say Grace

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CHARLES LAMB, the gentlest and one of the best loved of our English writers, once wrote an essay on the subject of saying grace before (or after) a meal. The tradition is probably as old as our religion for it is really an expression of gratitude to our gods for the fruits of the earth and to the animals that provide us, often ungrateful and unthinking, humans with nourishment.