A Heathen's Day | The Life and Thoughts of a Modern Day American Heathen

Posted by Hrafnkell on Jan 6, 2012

Free Your Mind in 2012

As a Heathen I find it as annoying to have people worrying about my “immortal soul” as I do having them think I worship rocks and trees. Worse is the idea that by practicing my First Amendment rights to freedom of belief I am destroying America by promoting and participating in a “Pagan culture” of “immorality and death.” I could only wish. If America really was being dominated by a Pagan...

Posted by Hrafnkell on Jan 4, 2012

A Heathen’s Day View of the Message from Iowa

What is the message of Iowa to America’s alternative religions? It is the same sent to the world’s second largest religion, Islam: there is no room for you in the American political process. Extremism is not a problem local to Iowa, obviously. Current Republican political theology developed out of the marriage between the GOP and the Religious Right and has been in the making since...

Posted by Hrafnkell on Dec 4, 2011

The Christian War on Paganism Continues

It’s an old war. The Jews fought it first, back in the 7th century B.C.E. The Christians then picked up the stick and spent a half-dozen centuries clubbing Pagans in the Roman Empire and turned their attention to Northern and Eastern Europe to murder Pagans there well into the Late Middle Ages. Fundamentalist Christians absolutely cannot abide Paganism or Pagans. People who have other ideas about God are...

Posted by Hrafnkell on Nov 24, 2011

Thanksgiving is for Heathens Too

There is nothing un-Heathen about Thanksgiving. Giving thanks is as old as time itself, since the first humans looked to the inhabitants of the Otherworld, or of the heavens, or of the forests and rocks and streams around them and gave thanks for all they had. The Pilgrims were merely treading an already well-trod road. Christianity may have remade the world, but it can be remade and remade again by each...

Posted by Hrafnkell on Nov 23, 2011

Gone A Viking – and Back Again

It’s fall. I haven’t posted here in months for one reason or another. Mostly I’ve been busy addressing the political situation over at PoliticusUSA, often from a Pagan perspective and it’s difficult and time consuming to write the same article twice and cross-posting is generally understood to be in bad form. Thus, my own blog, A Heathen’s Day, has suffered. I am determined to...

Posted by Hrafnkell on Aug 6, 2011

A Heathen Leadership Principle for the 21st Century

It’s hard for me to imagine a bunch of Heathens trying to run their own families, clans, and tribe into the ground, but this is exactly what the Republican Party is doing in America today. Under that umbrella term I include the Tea Party and the Religious Right, an unholy trinity if there ever was one. You like to think of people being motivated by their enlightened self-interests. This is what the...

Posted by Hrafnkell on Apr 24, 2011

Happy Ostara!

I have seen a great many Happy Ostara’s this morning, and why not? It’s Easter after all, another holiday stolen from our ancestors by Christianity. Why shouldn’t we honor our own gods according to the traditions of those ancestors? But when should we celebrate Ostara’s day? Should we celebrate it on the Christian Easter or should we have a separate day set aside for the occasion? The obvious...

Posted by Hrafnkell on Apr 8, 2011

AFA Says You Can’t Steal Easter Holiday We Stole from Paganism!

Holy smokes! You can’t be serious! First we have Christians claiming that people are making war on Christmas, stealing or destroying a Christian holiday. But of course, Christmas was originally a Pagan holiday stolen by Christians from Paganism. Now it’s Easter’s turn. Randy Sharp, special projects director for the American Family Association (AFA) says, “We’ve been doing this with...