Resources

Rituals in Asatru, Heathenry and Norse Paganism

Rituals are our way of communicating and connecting with the Gods, the spirits in the world around us and each other.

The rituals in Ásatrú, Heathenry and Norse Paganism are about creating community and harmony. They are how we reflect the benevolence of the Gods back to them and to one another. This doesn’t just apply to the rituals we do for specifically religious purposes, but also rituals we do to celebrate or commemorate special moments in our lives. We seek to create community and harmony whether we are celebrating a new child (Ausa Vatni) coming into your family, moving into a new house or mourning and remembering the life of someone we loved.

We don’t have a specific conversion ritual to Ásatrú, but you can think of your “first gift to the Gods” as your conversion.

One of the biggest questions we get is about how you convert to Ásatrú. Isn’t there some kind of ritual I can do? There isn’t a specific conversion ritual, but one way to mark your conversion to Ásatrú is to mark your first sacrifice as your moment of conversion. That is the moment you have chosen to actively engage in the gifting cycle. You have shown enough faith in the Gods to give them a gift. Why would you give a gift to something you didn’t believe in?

Welcome to Ásatrú.

This part of our resource library is where you can find helpful articles on the rituals we do, what sources we have for their existence in pre-Christian times and how these rituals are performed and used today. There are no restrictions for who may or may not perform these rituals based on perceived race, gender identity or ability. Anyone can be a Heathen.

Can I do Devotional Practices instead of Sacrifices?

Devotional practices are not offerings or sacrifices, they are activities people either don’t do regularly, or do a regular practice but in a particular way that puts someone in a frame of mind where they are focused on the holy aspect of what they are doing. Devotional practices could be something like “deadlifts for Odin” or it could be feeding the hungry for Njord.

These are not “sacrifices” but they’re devotional practices. They are incredibly important in someone’s religious life even though there aren’t many attestations of them in the historical records. Or maybe there are and we just miss them because we don’t know they are devotional practices.

You can do your deadlifts in the name of Odin, but that’s devotional practice, not sacrifice.