“Seriously. I don’t get why anyone who claims to be a proponent of Northern European Indo-European religious revival would take *anybody* spouting the frankly bizarre notion that “THE GODS AREN’T REAL” seriously.

There are religions which do not require Gods, this is so. But I am yet to see any actual evidence that Germanic/Nordic beliefs were among them. Indeed, *very much* the opposite.

What this means, is that if you wish to be an atheist, then that is your prerogative. I won’t agree with you about some pretty fundamental elements of both the human [particularly Indo-European] experience, and the nature of reality … but it is what it is.

Yet if you are running any of an array of closely interrelated, either right-out ‘atheistic’, or “oh, they’re all just archetypes, man!” positions, while *also* claiming to be some sort of Nordic/Germanic religious revivalist … then you are neither being a very good atheist [for what kind of atheist demands the trappings of actual religious belief, including “Gods”, yet vociferously denounces any and all actual *substance* to the very concept!], nor are you being anything approaching a Germanic or Nordic religious adherent.

Because *that* would require actual Belief.

Now, this leaves us with one key question. As there is *no* support for “The Gods Aren’t Real” in Nordic/Germanic religion of antiquity or the relatively more recent past [in fact, it is quite ironic, given how knee-jerk swift these sorts are to attack anything and anybody they don’t like as “Christian[-ism]” – the concept was probably first popularized amongst the Germanic peoples by Christian missionaries] … why on earth is it that we keep running across people who attempt to promulgate the exact opposite?

There are two somewhat coterminous answers.

The first of which, is that they probably like the aesthetic associated with the religions and mythologies in question; and therefore, co-opt as much as they can, in order to cover over for their own otherwise uninteresting personal appearances and/or fundamental world view.

And second, again closely linked to the first, are those people looking to push this or that pretty unfortunate agenda … who’ve worked out that they’ll get more people interested and engaged with it, if they’ve got some ‘outreach materials’ [by which I mean aesthetics] that look “cool”, or at least “familiar” to a certain proportion of the target audience. You get everything from manifestly a-historical white supremacist/white nationalist types, through to self-help-book pushers, and even demon-worshippers, plying this *exact* approach.

Now again, this is *not* to say that it is impossible to ‘run’ some religions [much more so than others] in effectively ‘Godless’, or more often, “Godsless” ways, whilst still remaining at least somewhat ‘authentic’ to some sort of actually-existing-historically tradition within its canon or corpus. I vehemently disagree with them, for various reasons, but some schools of Buddhism, or some ‘Nastika’ “Hinduism” approaches, do pretty much exactly that.

This is *also* not to say that you can’t be an atheist, or an adherent to some other, (likely non-Indo-European) religion, and go around claiming that you disbelieve – either generally, or specifically, likely respectively – in The Gods. I won’t agree with you, personally, but at least you’re not a walking internal-contradiction-appropriation that may often be regarded in a manner tantamount to a parasite upon a much more vibrant and resurrectingly alive host.

But if you are attempting to claim that you are a Nordic/Germanic religious revival adherent [a ‘Heathen’, they seem to like to be called] … yet who is *also* somehow, some sort of internally, inherently subversive advocate for the again manifestly anti-canonical concept that “THE GODS DON’T EXIST” …

… then it is very likely that you are nought but an atheist … in a fancy hat … who is looking for an intriguing style of conversation-starter line at parties.

Don’t be one of those.

Go and invent/ruin your *own* mythology … somewhere else!”

[-C.A.R.]