Heathen Books Suck

They do. They really do. It is rare to find a book that doesn't seem to presuppose that Ásatrú is the only Reconstructionist path, and rarer to find one that isn't rife with editting errors, or flat out misinformation and distortion of fact. They all read like someone's personal blogspot blog(actually a lot of these are at least written without spelling errors and have clickable citations). Even worse, a good chunk of them seem to be largely Germanic Mysticism based and not even Reconstructionist based. I'm reading two books right now...one is a text book, it's okay. The other was written by a Heathen and it's bad. It's unfortunate, especially for newcomers who are looking for something to read so they can learn what it is their respective path does, and how its people think.

I wish I could yell at every person that Krasskova and Edred Thorsson are highly inappropriate and inadequate avenues into Reconstructionism. Edred Thorsson's main background appears to be that of Germanic Mysticism. He also advocates "Odianism", some strange form of mystic NeoPaganism. I don't know about everyone else, but what he does is not Germanic Reconstructionism, and I wouldn't throw two pennies at either of their writings. A lot of these books seem to be flat out about magic too. A cursory look through the list of eponymous "Heathen books everyone talks about" on Amazon will tell you. A lot of them are about magic, and it's usually Occult based and not Recon based. Magic and mysticism and spelling errors are not all Reconstructionist paths have wrought. We need to do better.

Sinnsreachd Mythos by Liofrun Thunarsdotter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Li....
Based on a work at sinnsreachdmythos.tumblr.com.

0 members like this

Add a Comment

You need to be a member of RealPagan- Paganism for the Real World to add comments!

Join RealPagan- Paganism for the Real World

Comment by Airlia Skye on March 13, 2012 at 14:17: Thanks so much! I'd hate to jump blindly into my studies on this path. I'll look into your suggestions. :)

Comment by Liofrun Thunorsdotter on March 13, 2012 at 14:13: An easy one is probably Diana Paxson. Though I would take what she says with a grain of salt, at least from my memory her book was accessible and understandable. Another great author one should look into is Bil Linzie. Mark Ludwig Stinson has some great beginner books too like Heathen Gods. Again, these are good books for beginners but check their sources. Heathen Gods, for example is a good book for introducing one to Germanic Heathenry but perpetuates an urban myth "we dont kneel before our gods" that is contested in the lore. As mentioned below, Wodening is a good read. His books have a lot of spelling errors and whatnot though so you might want to just go to his blog or the website Englatheod. Check out the library at Temple of Our Heathen Gods, and their forum too. They have some gems there.

Comment by Airlia Skye on March 13, 2012 at 12:42: Thank you for the heads up, Liofrun. Anyone have any good book suggestions for aspiring Heathens?

Comment by Liofrun Thunorsdotter on March 12, 2012 at 12:17: I have not actually read his books as I am not sure what would be in them that is different than on his blog or the Wodening's Englatheod website. I do believe he knows his stuff though.

Comment by Lark on March 12, 2012 at 9:26: Out of curiosity, have you read any of Swain Wodening's book on Germanic Heathenism? I've met the man on a couple of occasions and he seems to know his stuff...but I'm not a Germanic Recon so I'd love to hear the opinion of someone more familiar with the material than I am.