Heathenry

Heathenry, also termed Heathenism or Germanic Neopaganism, is a modern Pagan new religious movement, the practitioners of which seek to revive the pre-Christian religions adhered to by the Germanic peoples of Iron Age and Early Medieval Europe. To reconstruct these past belief systems, Heathenry uses surviving historical, archaeological, and folkloric evidence as a basis, although approaches to this material vary considerably. Heathen communities are currently present in various parts of Europe, the Americas, and Australasia.

Although lacking a unified theology, Heathenry is typically polytheistic, centering on a pantheon of deities from pre-Christian Germanic Europe including both gods and goddesses. It adopts cosmological views from these pre-Christian religions, including an animistic view of the cosmos in which the natural world is imbued with spirits. The faith's deities and these spirits are honored in sacrificial rites known as blóts in which food and libations are offered to the spirits. These are often accompanied by symbel, the act of ceremonially toasting the gods with an alcoholic beverage. Some practitioners also engage in rituals designed to induce altered states of consciousness and visions, most notablyseiðr and galdr, with the intent of gaining wisdom and advice from the deities. Although there are many solitary practitioners who follow the religion alone, members of the Heathen community often assemble in small groups, usually known as kindreds or hearths, to perform their rites in specially constructed buildings or outdoors. Heathen ethical systems place great emphasis on honor, personal integrity, and loyalty, while beliefs about an afterlife are varied and rarely emphasized.

The primary division within the Heathen movement surrounds the issue of race. Many groups eschew racialist ideas, adopting a universalist perspective which holds that the religion is open to all, irrespective of ethnic or racial identity. Conversely, others adopt a racialist attitude – termed "folkish" within the community – by viewing Heathenry as a religion with intrinsic links to a Nordic race that should be reserved explicitly for white people. Some folkish Heathens further combine the religion with explicitly racist and white supremacist perspectives. Although the term "Heathenry" is used widely to describe the religion as a whole, many groups prefer different forms of designation, influenced by their regional focus and their attitude to race. While a number of groups venerating Scandinavian deities use Ásatrú or Forn Sed, those focusing on Anglo-Saxon deities use Theodism, and those adopting folkish perspectives tend to favor the terms Odinism and Wotanism.

The religion's origins lie in the 19th and early 20th century romanticist movements that glorified the pre-Christian beliefs of Germanic societies. Organised groups venerating the Germanic gods developed in Germany, Austria, and Australia, which typically exhibited a racialist interpretation of the religion, resulting in the movement largely dissolving following the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In the 1970s, new Heathen groups emerged in Europe and North America, developing themselves into formalized organizations in order to promote their faith. In recent decades, the Heathen movement has been the subject of academic study by scholars active in the field of Pagan studies.