Vidar's Gothi

A solitary practitioner contacted me to ask whether it is possible to have an online kindred. That is a good question. Though there answer is yes, there are some differences between an online community and one made up of people you know in person.

Lately, several questions have come in about the upcoming Yule. Seeing so many questions on the same subject in such quick succession looks a little like a sign that I need to write something on the subject. So, if you are interested, here are things to know about Yule.

I was rather surprised to see so many hits on the posting "Why Driving is a Heathen Issue" so I decided to look into it. The first step was to look up "heathen driving," on Google. It seems the article shows up fifth from the top, after three Christian links about "driving out heathens" and one Twitter post that doesn't seem to have anything Heathen-related at all.

Some in our religion feel they should learn an ancient language associated with their ancestors in order to feel greater kinship to the past. They often feel that their everyday language has become mundane or, in the case of modern English, too corrupted. It never hurts to learn another language, but which one and why?

Spring is coming in the northern hemisphere and that means the possibility of severe weather. Who would know more about weather and severe weather than a bunch of Heathens like ourselves? There's more than just noticing the severe weather, you can actually do something to make your community safer thereby being a responsible Heathen.

In a recent letter from a concerned mother, she expressed worry that her Heathen son was not being allowed to practice his religion while in prison. It occurred to me that this may be fairly common in our world. Here is the advice I gave to her, in the hope that it may help others as well.

You may have heard stories that February 22, 2014 is the end of the world as the Ragnarok begins. This is based on the idea that we've had three very harsh winters in a row and there are strange things from the ocean depths washing up onto shore. Those things may be worrisome, but we are not at the end yet.

In the northern hemisphere, the winter has been particularly cold this year. Though, historically, there have been much colder winters, it has been a while for most people. When the winter starts to give you come concerns, you know that you can turn to Ul, God of Winter.