In the book God-Emporer of Dune, there is a scene that describes a sect of people that were using artifacts of past Freman people in rituals in an attempt to remember the past. The Fremen were warriors with insane survival skills that were needed to survive harsh conditions. Over time the world changed, and these conditions no longer existed but the romanticized warrior lifestyle was longed for by these people. So they used the artifacts and tools to create rituals to remember this way of life and honor the past.
That always struck me as interesting, because when people do rituals today, no matter what religion, you are trying to remember some sort of lifestyle. This is especially true in Asatru. People are trying to remember and venerate their ancestral past. We take pride in the past moral compass and traditions our ancestors once lived.
We don't live their life, however. We are not in Viking Age Europe where personal strength and skill in battle determine your value. We live in an age where we are overstimulated by the internet, where the only way to prosper is to chase the dollar. People judge others by how much money they can obtain, and the people who look down on that are usually the people who don't have much money. It's an endless cycle that we find ourselves in.
We don't really know how many mistakes we are making within Asatru because most of our information is coming from works written by people who don't share the beliefs they are writing about. People ignore Germanic Folklore as well, which are stories that people told, building new beliefs that aren't even considered - and these are actually free of outside influences, unlike our Eddas and Sagas.
Some people presume their conclusions are superior to others because they are well-read, but no one can be completely sure. There is so much we do not know. So much information is shrouded in mystery, and when we think we have it all figured out, we learn something new that will turn these conclusions upside down.
The point is, that a spiritual path is a journey that each person walks differently. We shouldn't ever think we all have the entire scope of knowledge within us. Once we do that we stop learning and start stagnating.
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