Have you seen Wagner and Me? I cannot make it more than a few minutes at a time before I turn it off, overwhelmed by the emotion. For anyone with a Jewish bone in their body, let alone a Heathen bone right next to it, it is painful and shattering. The music of Wagner, the terror of Hitler, the Ring Cycle… it’s so much to deal with. It’s like looking into a Picasso painting, the ones where you see a female, but everything about her is distorted. Rectangles and triangles all coalescing in awkwardness and contradiction.

That’s me, the distorted Picasso lady watching another Jew (Stephen Fry) painfully juxtapose his interest in something Heathen with their Jewishness. Except for me, it’s worse. I don’t just like Heathen (Norse/Germanic pre-Christian religion, aka Asatru) mythology put to music, I like it all. I like the runes, the pantheon, the landscape, the Diana Paxson books. It got me through this hellish winter and makes me look at my own northern climate more reverently. It’s a tradition from the land of my ancestors, and it connects me to my land.

The fact that white supremacy still exists in this community disturbs me. I can’t be part of two different identities that are so contradictory, can I?

I am encouraged by the writings of Alyxander Folmer, specifically his recent article on Patheos, Wyrd Words: Drawing the Line–Heathens Against White Supremacists. I’m delighted to see someone openly embracing interfaith dialogue and confronting the racism that too often seems to underlie this heathen tradition I love. Kudos to you, Alyxander Folmer, and thank you for starting (or continuing) this much-needed conversation.

By the embrace of Frigg, by the branches of Asherah, may we all blessed be.