What is Ásatrú, Wyrd, Seaxnet, Blæd, Ðrægan, Barhelm heathen religion?

What is Ásatrú, Wyrd, Seaxnet, Blæd, Ðrægan, Barhelm heathen religion?.

find this quite interesting some old english or anglo saxon words, take a look, well worth a read, some of these ideas seem to sometimes be incorporated into the new age religions as well.

"Blæd Ðrægan Barhelm
[Old English, or Anglo-Saxon]

Blæd: blowing, blast, inspiration, breath, spirit, [breath of Woden?{Oðin}], (stroked 'æ', Hyper Text Impared)
Ðræ'gan: strong; to go, journey, etc.; [(poetic) to run]
Bar'helm: helmet with sacred Wanic boar image (stroked 'a', Hyper Text Impared)

Wyrd: [Old English] briefly; in the Germanic cosmology having to do with the World Tree Yggdrasil and the Well of Wyrd. A non-linear time concept of 'that-which-is' connected with ancestral memory, deeds, spinning & weaving, the Nine Worlds, the Norns, u.s.w. Check out The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture, by Paul Bauschatz for the ultimate explanation.

Seax'net: one of many spellings [East Saxon] for Saxnôt, a deity of the ancient Continental Saxons, their eponymous ancestor, possibly Freyr, or Tiwaz/Tyr. Means something like 'Friend of the Saxons', or 'Sword Companion'. A sax/seax was a short sword or long knife used by the barbarian Germanic tribes and now days is generally a straight single edged knife used for carving runes in wood.

Ása'trú: [Old Norse] a modern reconstruction of the ancient pre-Christian pagan/heathen religion of Northern Europe. Here is Gamlinginn's definition of Ásatrú at the Ring of Troth Official Web Page and Ingeborg's FAQ.



"The mythology of a people is far more than a collection of pretty or terrifying fables to be retold in carefully bowdlerized form to our schoolchildren. It is the comment of the men of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories of gods and demons their perception of the inner realities. We can learn much from the mythologies of earlier peoples if we have the humility to respect ways of thought widely differing from our own. In certain respects we may be far cleverer than they, but not necessarily wiser.

We cannot return to the mythological thinking of an earlier age; it is beyond our reach, like the vanished world of childhood. Even if we feel a nostalgic longing for the past, like that of John Keats for Ancient Greece or William Morris for medieval England, there is now no way of entry. The Nazis tried to revive the myths of ancient Germany in their ideology, but such an attempt could only lead to sterility and moral suicide. We cannot deny the demands of our own age, but this need not prevent us turning to the faith of another age with sympathetic understanding, and recapturing imaginatively some of its vanished power. It will even help us to view more clearly the assumptions and beliefs of our own time."

Hilda R. Ellis Davidson
Gods and Myths of the Viking Age
(also as Gods and Myths of Northern Europe)"