How do I become Ásatrú?

You become Heathen by making the Gods, Goddesses, and spirits a significant part of the way you live your life.

If you do that, you are well on your way to becoming Heathen. Most Heathens worship the Gods and Goddesses, but some merely adopt a “Germanic pagan philosophical worldview” without the worship of any deity.

Sometimes this question might be “How do I become a Heathen?” or “How do I become a Norse Pagan?”  and it’s all essentially the same question. You’ve had some experience with (or would like to have some experience with) the Divine in the form of the Gods that we know by the names they were called by the Germanic peoples, names such as Freyja, Freyr Yngve, Thor, Frigga, Odin and so on.

Let’s talk about it.

This is how you “become Ásatrú.”

We will break this down into some very simple principles

• Growth is expected.
• You don’t have to be like anyone else.
• You don’t have to be special in any other way than whoever you are
• The Gods love us and want us to be happy

The first step to becoming “Ásatrú” is to know that confusion is OK, not knowing is OK and growth is OK.

You don’t have to know everything and no one is going to expect you to know everything coming straight out of the gate. You might just have a feeling that a relationship with our Gods is what you’re being called to, and that’s great. That might be all you have to go on. Maybe you read a book about Norse Mythology and that lead you to wonder if there is actually a religion here.

If you feel something, that’s great. If you are just curious that’s great too. Don’t feel like you have to be granted permission or that you need to know everything before you start calling yourself Ásatrú, Heathen or Norse Pagan. You’ll learn as you go and the big secret that a lot of Pagans might not want you to know is that most of us had to do it the same way.

You don’t have to be like anyone else.

There are people who have been in Norse Paganism that do things a particular way, but that doesn’t mean it’s the one right way to do things. Your practice can differ wildly from other people’s practices. If you like what they do better than what you do, that’s OK too.

There are a lot of different ways to approach Heathenry. Even if you place a lot of importance on historical accuracy, you’ll still find that your practice might look different than someone else who is trying to reconstruct the same practice. In cases like that, it’s still always helpful to take a cooperative and open-minded approach to seeing different practice. How is it working for them? Does it seem like something you want to do?

You do not have to be special to worship the Gods

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a guy thinking he was supposed to be “king of all the Pagans because Odin came and visited me in a dream” but in reality it turned out he was just looking for a community that respected him and the journey he was on.

You do not have to be special to worship the Gods. The Gods are good and They are open to anyone. You’re special enough as you are to worship Them.

You do not need permission from Norse Pagans to be Norse Pagan

A lot of people interested in Ásatrú want to get some kind of permission from other Heathens that it’s OK for them to be Heathen too. You might find yourself saying stuff like “Odin came to me in a dream, what does that mean?” or “I was meditating and I saw Thor, does that mean anything?” or “I was working a spell and Freya spoke to me, what should I do?”

People are looking for signs from the Gods all the time, but sometimes when we’re saying that, what we’re really asking is “does that mean I can be Norse Pagan?” And it’s funny because the answer is always “yes, of course you can.”

You can be Norse Pagan, Ásatrú or Heathen. You might not find a community right away who you can practice with, but that will come in time and has more to do with how you develop your personal relationships within the community than anything else.

You do not have to prove descent to be Ásatrú and there are no “blood quotas”

Our Gods call people of any background or ancestry. Or someone might not feel especially “called” but just feel an affinity for this way of religious practice. Some people are inspired by looking into their Scandinavian or Germanic ancestry to explore the practice of Heathenry, and that’s great, but it’s not a requirement.

Everyone has Ancestors and everyone descends from somebody

Many Heathens practice Ancestor worship. Does that mean you have to have Scandinavian ancestors specifically?

It’s a widely known fact about humanity that in order to be born and live for our first few years, we have to have parents and guardians. We are a funny species like that. And we would wager to guess you have those kinds of people in your life whether you associate that link with being biologically related or related by affection, adoption or affinity.

We can all engage in the practice of worshipping and honoring the Ancestors, because we all have ancestors.

Hospitality, Compassion, Benevolence and Inclusivity are good for us too and entirely consistent with the Heathen faith.

Becoming heathen does not mean you must become a raging berserker. How many times have you seen that post on Facebook, IG or Twitter? You know the one. The one with some kind of slavering wolf or some rough looking horned helmeted guy talking about how “Jesus wants your love, Odin wants you to grow up” or something like that.

Such false machismo may be how some people approach our faith, but it is ultimately a poor way to live a full human experience.

Loving people, caring for others, gratitude and reciprocity are important. This is not what people think about when they think of the rough and tumble Viking warriors of old, but they are an important part of an authentic Heathen life. Our relationship with the Gods is based in part on the evidence of the practices of real people who really lived, worshiped and loved our Gods, and not the romanticized mythology of a brutal, unforgiving culture of merciless white warlords.

Our Faith is in the Gift Cycle

Our ritual of sacrifice or “Blot” centers the giving an offering in gratitude to the Gods or in hope for a gift soon to come.

Our hope is in our Gods: as They continue to bring the Spring and the Summer even after the darkest coldest winter, so They can restore us even after our own darkest, loneliest moments.

Our faith is in that moment when we feel furthest from our Gods: Their promise remains, and They will never fail to return a gift for a gift.

Find a safe spiritual community that encourages your growth.

The last point is to find a safe spiritual community that encourages your growth. We say that very intentionally.

Paganism is still like the Wild Wild West. It is not always easy to find a group of compatible with whom to practice, but it is well worthwhile. We will talk more about finding spiritual community in our future Blog Entries, but for now, just get familiar with the previous principles.

Ásatrú Conversion Ceremony

Becoming Ásatrú is as easy as believing, in your heart, in this fundamental principle: the Gods are Good and we engage them through participating in the Gifting Cycle.

But some people want a ritual, like a baptism, that can say where they’ve become Heathen. A date they can point to and say “before this I was not Heathen and after this I was.” Ásatrú had no rituals for this because in pre-Christian times, it would have simply been the religion you were born into. Some Heathens like to date their conversion to Ásatrú as the day they gave their first gift to the Gods.

That’s as good a moment as ever to “confirm” your faith. After all, why would you give a gift to a God you didn’t believe in? The moment you engage in the gift-cycle with the Gods is the moment you’ve entered into a friendship with them, and expressed the benevolence that they show to us back to them.

We have resources available here at The Troth to help you get started.

There are lots of books you’re probably going to want to read, but we have enough free resources in our Resource Library to get you an idea of how the modern faith is practiced, lived and thought about today. We also have a Lore Program for people who want to go in-depth into the literature and scholarship that underlies much of what we know about how our faith was practiced and how it has changed over time. But don’t feel like you have to be a scholar if all you want to do is just get right into it. You can do this just as you are. Welcome to Ásatrú.