Thulean Archives

One of the main problems with paganism today is image.^[1] Most people identify it with ganja smoking hippies who just use paganism as an excuse to behave in a non-Christian fashion, so to speak.^[2][3] And when we grow up, if we hear about paganism at all in school or elsewhere, we hear about a cartoonish version of paganism where the pagans are presented as basically complete idiots believing in physical gods riding on chariots pulled by goats or cats or riding horses with eight legs. And of course it's presented to us that way intentionally. They want us to think of paganism as something childish, something ignorant and something absolutely ludicrous.^[4] What we should do with paganism today, or rather what we should do with our mythologies is to unlearn everything we know. We have to start from scratch and ask us questions regarding everything that we thought we knew. For example, Odin, all the myths about Odin in Scandinavian mythology, are they really myths about Odin? And of course we assume that they are, but in reality they're not. The myths about Odin are not about Odin the deity. The myths about Odin in the Scandinavian mythology are myths describing what human beings did when they were impersonating Odin.^[5] And the myths about Odin, they don't describe what Odin did or said or learned or whatever, they describe what the human beings did in order to learn, in order to grow wiser and so forth. They did so impersonating Odin, because Odin is the deity of wisdom, of the runes, the secrets. And in order to learn these secrets, in order to gain access to these secrets, you have to become Odin, you have to impersonate Odin. And what the myths describe is not Odin, but what you and I are supposed to do in order to learn these secrets, in order to learn the runes. And of course rune is just a term for secrets. It doesn't refer to the rune symbols, it's a word that means simply secret.^[6] So in order to learn these secrets about life and the world we live in, you have to impersonate Odin, you have to become like Odin. And that's just one example of how you have to unlearn everything you knew and start over again and approach paganism and our myths in a completely different way. You have to assume that everything you know is wrong. And you have to try to learn it anew, by yourself.^[7][8] And when you do, you will understand that it's not at all a cartoonish religion, it's not based on ignorance, it's not in any way like the Christians or atheists or humanists or whatever you wish to call them have presented for us over the years. And I used the myths about Odin as an example, but in reality all our myths are not what they have told us. I mean all our myths are descriptions of different mysteries, and of course a mystery is just a ritual, a high festival, so it's like a script. If you can imagine a pagan festival being like a theatre, a play, then the myth is a script that the players follow, and by doing so they learn something.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]}

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1. The Key to Paganism (Paganism, Part V()
2. In reality, the moral aspects of Christianity, almost all come directly from Paganism.
3. Paganism is not Hedonism.
4. Also, many New Age occultists, seem to think of themselves as "Pagans", while they in reality "explore" and embrace purely non-European concepts.
5. So in a sense the myths ARE about Óðinn after all, because by impersonating him, they BECAME him.
6. In this context that is.
7. You can also read "Sorcery and Religion in Ancient Scandinavia", to quickly learn some of the basics.
8. Or you can read the chapter in MYFAROG about the "High Festivals", to learn a lot more.
9. I have hung in the windy tree.
10. I have fallen and picked up the runes.
11. I am Óðinn.
12. And so can you be.
13. By impersonating him.
14. Your personal enlightenment is you own responsibility.