Britain recognizes Druidry as religion for first time, gives it charitable status

**Liffrea** · 10-04-2010, 02:48 PM

Originally Posted by Wynfrith
I do understand the point your making, but there is, in my opinion, a lack of consistency with individuals who purportedly practice Odinism (just as an example) and talk of it being the religion of their ancestors whilst acknowledging that they do not hold the same belief and have the same practices. To me, it is flawed to talk of the path of your ancestors, claim to follow it, and admit that you are doing things very different to them.

I wouldn’t say I’m following the path of my ancestors. When I get right down to it what do I know of my ancestors? Up until a couple of years ago I couldn’t have told you the names of my great grandparents. I’m not from a “family unit”, three of my grandparents were stone cold before I was born, my mother died when I was an infant, family and ancestry mean very different things to me than they do most others here I would imagine. I have researched my family tree, as I see it even knowing the names of people is something, I’m not a ritual person so for me this is a form of honouring them, I don’t know their stories but at least I know their names, but I don’t claim to be alike to my forefathers because I’m not. When you get right down to it after a dozen generations you’re probably more related to your next door neighbours than the names on your family tree.

I’m of the Folkist variety of Heathen but not because my distant ancestors were Anglo-Saxon farmers who may have honoured the Vanir or because some may have been Danes who bellowed Odin before cutting a monks head off but because I believe that these beliefs are born of a mindset, a world view, that is unique to a people, Odinism isn’t what our folks practised in the “good old days” it is something that has grown out of a variety of forms, some of which are linked to the beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons and Norse, some of which are later growths. Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra…….I think who spoke to Nietzsche was less a Persian mage and more a certain one eyed individual, yet Nietzsche had little knowledge of northern faiths, he was a self confessed “southerner” more at home in the Mediterranean than the North or Baltic Sea. Yet he is just one example of the northern outlook on the world, no African or Indian or Chinese could have wrote Zarathustra (probably no Englishman for that matter but that’s something else!), none of them could have written Beowulf or have the appreciation for Old English and Old Norse literature that northern people do. You can’t explain the connection, it’s like identity not many can really explain what they mean by their identity, not in words.

It is just something you know to be.