ÁsatrÚ

Of Ygdrasil

What is Asatru?

Asatru is a religion. It is the pre-Christian religion

of Northern Europe.

Its earliest forms were practiced by wandering tribes

thousands of years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

How is Asatru different from Christianity?

It differs in many ways.

Christianity believes there is only one God.

This kind of belief is called monotheism.

Asatru believes in many Goddesses and Gods.

This kind of belief is called polytheism.

Christianity believes that it is the one true religion

for everybody.

This makes it a universal religion.

Asatru knows that there are many different tribes

and ethnic groups, each with its own spiritual beliefs

and its own Goddesses and Gods,

and Asatru believes that each of those beliefs are valid.

Christians, because they believe

they have the only truth, try to convert other people.

Believers in Asatru don't want to convert people.

They just want people to learn about their religion,

so that they can decide for themselves

whether they belong in Asatru or in some other religion.

How does Asatru connect to Northern European culture?

Just as the Navaho tribe of Indians (Native Americans)

has Navaho spiritual beliefs,

long ago the Germanic people,

ancestors of the people of England, Germany

and Scandinavia lived in tribes.

Like the Navaho,

the Germanic tribes had their own spiritual beliefs.

If you know a little about the spiritual beliefs of the Navaho

or other Native Americans,

you know that their spiritual beliefs are a part of,

and connected to, their culture.

Most tribal peoples are the same way.

They don't divide their tribe's ways into categories

of 'religion' and 'culture'.

Instead, they take a more holistic approach.

They integrate their spiritual life with their cultural life.

Asatru, as a tribal-type religion,

looks at things in the same way.

The ancestral culture of the various

Northern European countries,

like England, Germany and Scandinavia

(which is also the culture of many Americans)

is integrated with the more 'religious' side of Asatru.

What does Asatru believe about family and ancestry?

In Asatru, we try to stay connected to our whole family:

grandparents, aunts and uncles,

distant cousins---we're all part of one clan.

And we like to know more about our ancestors,

going back for many generations.

Many people got started in Asatru

because they know it was

the religion of their remote ancestors.

Wait!

If Asatru is the ancestral religion

of the Northern Europeans,

doesn't that make it sort of an all-White club?

Not at all! Many people who are African-American

also have some ancestors who were English

(or other Northern European).

The same goes for other non-White people.

It is their ancestral tradition,

no matter what their skin color is.

And some White people, such as people of Greek ancestry, have an

ancestral religion which is different from

Asatru. Even in the case of

people who have no known Northern European ancestry,

there is no way of knowing that they don'thave

some unknown Northern European ancestry,

maybe a hundred generations back.

If such a person really wants to join Asatru,

no one would want to stop them.

Do the Asatru people have a holy book, like the Bible?

Yes and no.

There are two books, the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda,

which tell the holy stories of the Asatru faith.

But no one would ever decide these books were the literal,

last word on the Asatru-folk's relations with their Gods.

People evolve, after all.

Do Asatru people pray? If so, to Whom?

Yes, they do pray.

But they don't believe in submitting themselves

to their Gods as a slave to a master.

Asatru people pray to whichever God they feel close to.

Christians talk about having

a personal relation with Jesus.

Do Asatru people have

anything like that with their Gods?

Yes. A person who has a personal relationship

with the Goddess Freya is called a fried of Freya.

Do Asatru people have any morals?

Asatruar believe in being honorable---behaving

in an upright moral way.

There are two sections in the Poetic Edda

that deal with moral behavior---

the Havamal and the Lay of Sigrdrifa.

Also, modern Asatru has the Nine Noble Virtues,

which serve as a summary of the Asatru moral teachings.

Do Asatru people believe in an afterlife?

Asatru people do believe in an afterlife.

The soul may go to Helheim,

the place of the dead,

or, if the person lived an honorable life,

to the hall of a favorite God or Goddess.

In time, the soul may be born again,

reincarnated, usually within the family line.

That's why it's customary to name babies

after deceased relatives or ancestors.

If Asatru is so great,

why did the people of Northern Europe turn Christian?

Often they were forced to.

Christian armies would attack an 'ungodly' Heathen tribe,

and if they won,

they would force the survivors to submit to baptism.

Or Christian kings would forbid their subjects to trade

with a Heathen tribe. That's why the people of Iceland,

the last refuge of the Asatru believers,

voted to make Iceland a Christian country.

But Christianity is a higher form of religion,

isn't it?

Why would anyone want to go back to a earlier one?

There is no proof that Christianity is higher or better.

Look at the bad things

that officially Christian countries have done:

the Inquisition and the burning of heretics

and alleged witches,holy wars against non-Christian tribes,

pogroms against Jews, the Holocaust....

Look at all the criminals

who were brought up in Christian homes,

and the fanatical Christians who commit crimes

such as killing people who work in abortion clinics.

Much of that is based on the kind of intolerance

that is a side effect of believing your

way is the One True Way.

Asatru people believe their way is not the One True Way,

but one of many.

I've heard of Asatru.

Aren't they kind of right-wing types?

Like Christians, Asatru folk come in left-wing,

right-wing, and moderate varieties.

Didn't Hitler worship the old Norse gods?

Was he an Asatru?

Hitler lived and died a Catholic.

While the Nazis made use of Norse imagery in their propaganda,

they were most popular with Germany's conservative

Christians who wanted

to return Germany to Christian 'family values'.

Asatru groups in Nazi Germany were forbidden

to meet and suffered other restrictions.

One Asatru leader,

a man of Jewish ancestry named Ernst Wachler,

ended in a concentration camp.

What if I want to join Asatru?

Or Read up on the.......

Also, there are many sources

of information on modern Asatru on the Internet,

use them. Contact some of the Asatru organizations.

And begin to pray to some of the Norse Gods.

Fornbyar in Sweden

I once heard a tale of a great tree -

a tree so large that you could not appreciate how tall it was until darkness fell over the earth.

Then, as the last light faded away in the west,

stars began to appear, hanging from the upper branches of the tree.

This magnificant tree had three large roots.

One root went down to the source of all life;

where there was sweet water, which was in the essence of all living things,

and from which all things grew and blossomed.

Fairies sprinkled this water on the leaves of the tree each morming.

The second root, on the other side of the tree went down into deep cold water.

On this side of the tree decay began,

and the tree aged and was worn down by all sorts of creatures

that consumed and gnawed at the life of the tree.

As you know, there never was a good that evil came not;

their never was growth and beauty without decay.

In the center of the tree, the largest and deepest root went way down,

into the center of the earth, to the region of memory and renewal.

Many tiny dark little creatures worked very hard in these depths of the earth

to restore the decay of the tree into a life-giving mead.

It is said that any mortal which walks through the forest

and gathers in the sweet smell of this mead as it sifts up through the soil,

will become so intoxicated with the divine

that words will fall from their mouth as if from the mouth of the creator, and poetry is born.

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