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On July 23, 2019, Garrett Kelsey was arrested in Cedar Falls, Iowa, for making racist, violent threats via email and telephone a Jewish organization based in Manhattan. Among other things, the man demanded that the organization apologize to the “Asatru community” for posting a video about Nordic neo-Nazis. He identified himself as “Garrett Odinschild”, a reference to the Norse god Odin.

This week's selection from the forthcoming third edition of Our Troth seems timely. June 5 is the feast day in the Roman Catholic Church of St. Boniface, who was noted for his missionary efforts in present-day Germany, until he was martyred in 754. Among other deeds, he is said to have felled the "Oak of Jupiter" (presumably sacred to Thor, or Donar) that once stood at Gaesmere (probably near Fritzlar in modern Hesse) and built a chapel from its wood. He is said to have destroyed other idols and holy sites.

One of the things I want to to in the new Our Troth is give a bit more space to deities known from Germany and Anglo-Saxon England. The previous editions folded Saxnot, or Seaxneat, in with Tyr, and while this is a possibility, there are other opinions, within and outside of the Heathen community, as to who Saxnot might be. So Saxnot will get a section of his own, and here's the working draft of it. Enjoy! And feel free to post any comments you might have, or else drop me a line.

Saxnot (Sahsnôt, Seaxnēat)

Once again, I'm blogging excerpts from the upcoming third edition of Our Troth. This week we continue with the mostly new chapter on the Indo-Europeans. The first edition of this chapter, back in 1993, was mostly written by Sunwynn Ravenswood. Recent discoveries—especially the ability to sequence and analyze DNA from ancient human remains, as well as some new syntheses of the past century of archaeological fieldwork—mean that I'm pretty much having to rebuild this chapter almost from the foundations.