I originally do not believe in God. I read a book (Possession, was the third in the series and I regret starting from the third, Lol) and it talked about rune stones. I've done little research and found out that lead to the Asatru religion, am I correct? I've done some more reading and thinking about converting. But now I question this religion too! Is Odin real? How do we know? Does the Asatru religion believe in an afterlife? Sigh, the simple things. All I want to know is, is Odin real? how do we know? Is there an afterlife in this religion? Also if Odin is real, how do we know? I would like to know some other basic facts.
You should go to http://witchvox.com and look under "traditions." You should find the basics on Asatru. You can also just search the term on the website and you'll find articles. Basically it's Norse paganism.
Changing religions does not mean changing Gods. The Supreme Lord is one with many names and many prophets.
Not believing in afterlife does not mean it stops existing.
Any belief in God can help you to find the truth. You need to know what kind of God Odin is. Is it a name of the Supreme Lord or is it a demigod or what? Believe in the Supreme Lord, pray to Him for guidance and go on searching.
There are a variety of approaches to Germanic pagan religion. Asatru is one but there are many others. If it is something that you interested in, take your time and do some research, meet some people in your local area using meet up.com, The Troth's steward program, or email me and I can put you in contact with heathens in your region.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by runes leading to the Asatru religion. If by "rune stones" it is referring to small bits of stone that have rune st aves carved or drawn on them, this is a modern application of the runes in divination. If you mean by a big stone with an inscription done in rune st aves as a sort of memorial, this was very common in the Scandinavian countries during the Viking age and earlier.
Is Odin real?
Yes. To my way of thinking, if you think of real on a scale of 1 to 10, he's an 11.
How do I know he is real?
To know that anything is real we must first open ourselves to the potential of its existence. So, if you assume that Odin does not exist or probably does not exist then you cannot experience him and cannot "know" he exists. On the other hand, if you open yourself to the experience of him or any other god or entity for that matter, then, assuming the entity exists, it can reveal itself in some manner. This "opening" is not an easy thing to accomplish in our day and age and the conditioning we've had. In many ways you simply cannot "know" a god to exist, in the sense that we know that a physical thing exists. We can only experience the gods on their terms.
Belief and truth, is really in the eyes of the beholder. There are those out there that certainly do not believe that the old non-Abrahamic Gods are anything more than human constructs for natural phenomena, and then there are others, such as myself, who actively honor and worship these ancient Gods.
There is an afterlife, although from remaining textual records written by Christian scholars after the time of conversion much isn't known about it. There was no dualistic notion of heaven or hell, rather the realm of the dead was specifically Hel (which did not have any negative connotations with it). It was the type of life that you led, or perhaps the manner in which you died, which determined your 'outcome'.
Those who died in battle (or who had been warriors) upon death might go to either Odin's hall Valhalla, or Freya's hall Sessrumnir. If you were a maiden that died, you'd go to the Goddess Gefjon's hall. Those who die at sea were said to go to Ran's hall. Then we have the Vingolf, which was ah all that we know hosted the dead, but we were uncertain as to whether it was another of Odin's halls meant for those who were not warriors, or perhaps one of the Goddesses' halls.
While there may have not been a heaven/hell destination in your afterlife, that's not to say that there wasn't a place in the afterlife set aside for those who had committed evil. We know of two such places,
Nifolhel where those who have committed evil go, and Nastrond (possibly also known as Wyrmsele (in Old English)) where the most evil are sent.
If you want to learn more, you might want to check out the book Exploring the Northern Tradition by Krasskova available via Amazon or in many cases with interlibrary loan from your local library. You may also want to check out some of the websites for some of the national Asatru organizations such as the Asatru Folk Assembly and The Troth. There's even a great audio only podcast called Ravencast.
Hi Sweet, I know nothing about Asatru religion but i know Thor (Odin's son) is real because i have experienced him. I don't quite know or understand why it was Thor and not Odin, Jesus or Mohammad who i experienced, but that's just the way it happened.
You can believe whatever you want. You don't even have to follow the crowd or believe man's teachings (religion), you can have your own individual beliefs (spirituality).
I'm looking at the Asatru religion, I'm not sure?
