/asatru/ - Asatru / Heathenry / Paganism

If you're a right wing pagan in the modern world you should be indifferent to death already

If that's too hard for you or you're a liberal -kill yourself- or study the fucking lore for once, almost every myth in germanic religion reinforces the idea of not fearing death

When you die you will be reincarnated in one of your relatives.

Fearing death is like fearing sleep. It is a necessary step in a cycle you have little control over.

>>9786

Not OP and personally I lean to the idea of familial reincarnation more than I lean to the idea of "Valhalla or Helheim" (if not familial reincarnation, then becoming an ancestral spirit to guide your family and add to their luck), but where does the idea come from? I've seen it around a bit and it "feels" right as an idea to me but I'd like to see the sources which modern people first got the idea from. Also you say one of your "relatives", rather than one of your "descendants". Just curious, but do you think that a descendant of a sibling/cousin of yours is possible reincarnation material? I was under the impression that only your own descendants are eligible, so to speak, but I obviously can't claim any of these ideas as being definitely true.

A note on the reincarnation idea, and the world population increasing: If we take reincarnation to be true, clearly we must accept that some people are born "for the first time" or the world population would remain static, as there could only be one birth for every death if it were necessary for a child to be a reincarnation of a prior life. I've seen the idea put forward that perhaps being "several lives old" increases one's chance of having strong luck and innate characteristics, and that people who are "behind the bell curve" are likely first-timers on the stage of life. Just an interesting thought.

>>9785

>If you're a right wing pagan in the modern world you should be indifferent to death already

If it was that easy we wouldn't be living in the modern world. Could you easily kill yourself? I don't think most could.

>>9788

To me the ability to commit suicide is the measure of the fear of death. Then it really becomes an imminent possibility in your mind

Ideologically and spiritually i don't fear death. But in order to commit suicide you need to get past some pretty intense survival instincts (They are at a primal level most of us don't understand). You would need depression/stress and strong willpower. I can be indifferent to death, but i don't think i could kill myself. Not unless I incapable mentally or physically because of age or disease.

Well, there is a Saga where the hero and his maiden were mentioned as being reincarnations of themselves.

I don't think i got the idea of "Relatives" from anywhere other than my own mind, but then again i don't know the exact sources that Varg used to imply it was only descendants.

Well considering all the people that die at birth, or did die at birth. Those who cannot have children for this reason or the other. The number of people that have lived and not had children is more than the number that lived and had children. So either there are shitloads of spirits floating around here, or there. Or maybe the criteria for reincarnation is not that specific. I reckon that you would be able to be reincarnated in anyone who is very close to you genetically. The type of genetic similarity that would produce inbred babies.

>>9802

That sounds rather reasonable, really. Speaking with someone from here about some comparative study, he said that in Slavic tradition it's quite clearly stated that reincarnation along family lines is a thing. Essentially, if you cannot reincarnate as someone directly descended from yourself, then you reincarnate as someone directly descended from one of your kinsmen; if this is also not possible, then as someone "new" in another family within your race who doesn't have any available ancestors to reincarnate as them. He put forward the somewhat amusing image of their death goddess as fulfilling this impossibly busy desk clerk duty of taking all the dead and organising them as efficiently as possible to get the most possible familial reincarnations and requiring as few new souls as possible. A silly image, perhaps, to picture a goddess filling out paperwork at a desk, but it illustrates the point well enough of "you reincarnate in the closest blood-tie available" which may well be just as appropriate to Germanic tradition as Slavic, even if it isn't as explicitly attested.

Not a goddess working in a stuffy office like an "empowered" woman. But a Norn casually weaving, with all the time in the world.