Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication- Leonardo da
Vinci
Theodism is a movement dedicated
to the study and revival of the tribal religion of the
ancient Germanic people. The Anglo-Saxon word
Þéodisc is an adjective meaning "of a people." The
word Þéod meaning "a people" or "a tribe." The
word geleáfe means "belief" or "faith."
Þéodisc geleáfe literally means the "belief of the
people" or "belief of the tribe."
The term "Germanic" refers to people that spoke a language
reconstructed by linguists called Proto-Germanic. The
people who spoke this early language eventually broke up
into groups whose descendants today speak languages such as
English, Dutch, German, Icelandic or Swedish. Some well
known examples of historic Germanic people are the
Anglo-Saxons, Frisians, Goths, Vikings and Franks. These
various Germanic peoples had material, linguistic, ethical
and spiritual cultures that can be said to have the same
origins and are quite similar in most ways. Sweartfenn
Theod studies and follows the customs of the heathen
Anglo-Saxon people.
The contempary reawakening of the "belief of the tribe" is
about thirty years old. In the late seventies a group was
created to revive the religion of the heathen Anglo-Saxons.
This small group became the first modern theod. A man known
as Garman Lord continued over the years to innovate and
improve Theodism with the help of many others. Through
serious study of anthropology, linguistics, philosophy,
Indo-European cultures and the rigorous application of what
was learned, Theodism became more and more authentically
Germanic. As new things were learned certain practices were
taken up and others set aside. The work and dedication of
Theodish folk over the years has resulted in an orthopraxic
religion that is simple in form but deals with complex
issues with great versatility and beauty.
In the first decade and a half of Theodism, the basic
hierarchal structure in use today emerged. In the early
90's the Gering Theod was formed by Garman Lord and a few
others. During this period, the Gering Theod enjoyed a
great deal of rapid growth. Theodism also became better
known to adherents of other types of Germanic Heathenry. As
Theodism grew larger, more theods were formed and became
part of what was known as the Winland Rice. Due to a number
of factors, the Winland Rice slowly faded and eventually
dissolved. Several former members of the Winland Rice have
created their own theods and continue the work that Garman
began. Sweartfenn Theod is one of these.
We say that Theodism is tribal but what does that mean
exactly? It is our contention that religion, in general, is
tribal and communal. This means that the religion itself is
contained within the worldview of a people and their
culture. When tribal people worship their gods, it is
almost always done communally; they worshiped together as a
group. Worship was performed as a whole and the tribe was
thought of as a single entity. They did not see themselves
as individuals worshiping the gods together but as a tribe
worshiping the gods.
In folk religions, the spiritual is part of everything that
a particular people does. This was true for the ancient
arch-heathen folk whom we look to for the basis of all we
do. When they sowed and reaped the crops, when they chose a
new king, when they selected sites for homes and when they
made war; all these things had the thread of their
understanding of the divine and the sacred at its
traditional foundation. It is clear to us that the ancient
arch-heathens did not have a "religion" in the same way we
think of religion today. What they had was a culture with a
spirituality and religiosity built in. This tribal and
communal practice helped to create group solidarity and
maintain the harmony and strength of the tribe without
recourse to written law or elaborate systems of governance.
What we would think of as separate aspects of life,
government, religion, family life were all one thing. Every
part of life was interwoven as one fabric. You can trace a
single thread through a fabric but it is part of the whole
fabric. Without other threads there is not a whole cloth.
When all the threads are woven into a single piece of cloth
it lends strength to the whole with each thread still
retaining its own distinctiveness. This is how we view our
religion. It is part of who we are, every moment of
everyday. It informs everything we do and how we do it.
Each part of our lives is connected and strengthened by
every other part and can be viewed as a healthy holistic
way of being. The theod is also encapsulated in this
metaphore. Each member of the theod is connected to the
whole and is strengthened by the whole but is distinctive.
The theod is strengthened by each member but is a whole
entity that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The gods we worship are the same gods that were worshiped
by the Vikings with whom you may be more familiar. These
gods are known by their Norse names as Odin, Thor, Tyr,
Heimdall and many others. We use the Anglo-Saxon names for
these gods such as Woden and Thunor. It is very important
to understand that the reason why we worship our ancestral
gods and the manner that we worship them is not in order to
gain anything ourselves. The gods are generous in many
ways. We can never repay them gift for gift for their
generosity. We are not specifically seeking out some sort
of spiritual experience or enlightenment by virtue of our
rites and practices. We are worshiping the gods because
they are worthy of worship. Our heathen ancestors had a
relationship with the gods and we seek to reforge those
bonds with the gods of our people.
Our primary purpose, in coming together as a Theod, is to
worship the gods that were worshiped by our Anglo-Saxon
ancestors in a manner that is consistent with how they
worshipped. Our intention is that we worship the gods as
they were accustomed to being worshiped in ancient times.
In order to successfully give our offerings there are many
things that have to be achieved before performing such
worship. The appropriate roles of each member of the theod
are set down and understood by each of us; we come together
in friendship and have relationships with one another that
are reciprocal in nature. All of this and more is done so
that at the point that we come together as a single group,
a single entity before the gods, that we are focused
entirely on them and honoring them as part of our
reciprocal relationship with them. We honor and give
offerings to our ancestors and the spirits that live on the
land and in the home. We also honor ancestors and Germanic
cultural heros in communal settings such as the drinking
rituals symble and gebierscip.
In A Case for
Orthopraxy, Wulfgaest Hlaford discusses how
there are correct ways to perform certain rituals and to
give offerings to the gods. The form our rituals take is
based on our study and contemplation of what we loosely
call "lore." "The Lore" is primary written sources from
ancient times, studying information learned by
archeologists, folklorists and Germanic language
scholars that tell us about the culture and the
religious practices of the ancients. We also use other
more abstract and theoretical disciplines such as
anthropology and comparative religion in our work to
understand how and why the arch-heathens practiced
sacral observances. We make it a point to study the
culture as a whole to keep these practices in context.
Context is key in understanding the arch-heathen
worldview. If one looks at the lore from a modern
viewpoint then certain practices seem to make no sense.
When considering these practices in terms that the
ancients understood them, they become intelligible and
even obvious. This is not an easy process by any means.
It takes years of introspection and disciplined work to
comprehend the ancients on their own terms. By looking
at things that, on the surface, seem very mundane like
what sorts of food were grown and how they built their
dwellings we can begin to understand the culture as a
whole and thus achieve a greater understanding of the
spiritual thread in particular.
Theodism has a hierarchal structure that is based on the
ancient social structure. There were three primary classes
in the social structure in Germanic heathen society. The
highest of these is what most modern people would think of
as the aristocratic nobility. These were the eorls
and their thegns who were rulers and warriors.
There was a lower class of free men called ceorls
and then a slave class (thralls) known as theowes.
Each caste had reciprocal responsibilities to those above
them and to those below them. There was some degree of
social mobility in ancient heathen society. One could be
released from or work their way out of slavery and become a
freedman. It was not unusual for a freeman to become a
slave in order to pay off a debt. Ceorls could become
thegns and thegns could become eorls. This social mobility
depended on ones social standing based on the value of
their deeds and the reputation they gained by those deeds.
In the Theodish movement each tribe has its own approach to
how they implement these classes called arrung but
generally resemble the following pattern. There is a lord
or lady who leads the theod and stands at the pinnacle of
the hierarchy. The lord has a group of individuals sworn to
assist in the performance of blot and other
important functions. These oath bound individuals are
called thanes. Thanes may serve many different functions
within the theod. Both the lord/lady and the thegns have a
number of responsibilities to fulfill within the theod and
are oathbound to do so. They are dedicated to the well
being of the theod as a whole and work to instruct and
improve the worth of those individuals in their charge.
Next come the churls who are the rank and file members of
the theod who also have certain responsibilities though
these are largely self defined. While churls do have some
of the responsibilities implicit in being free members of
the theod they are able to decide how they wish to
contribute to the theod and how much of their time they
want expend in the service of their lord and theod. Churls
may be raised to the arrung of thane if they work hard on
behalf of the theod and are worthy. Below the churl is the
thrall. The article Radical
Acculturation describes how to become a thrall
and what that means in greater detail. The thrall is a
person who desires to join the theod but does not yet
know all the thews of the theod and has not proven
themselves worthy to have "freedom" within theod.
It is important to note that the lord of a theod is a
"sacral" lord. That is, the lord is duty bound to officiate
or perform certain rituals on behalf of the theod. Through
their ritual acts of blot on the behalf of the
tribe they establish, maintain and protect the relationship
the tribe has with the gods. The theod must be seen here as
a whole with the lord being the bridge or connection
between the gods and tribe. That means the lord is the
embodiment of the tribe in a single person. They are the
container and the protector of the luck and mægen
of the tribe. This does not mean that individuals within
the theod do not or cannot have individual observances and
relationships with the gods. Since Theodism is a communal
religion, we are mostly unconcerned with the individual
ritual practices one may observe in their own home.
The theod, as do all types of community, must have rules
for proper conduct both in the performance of sacred rites
but also in social conduct between each other and with
those outside of the theod. In Theodism, these "rules" are
unwritten. We call them thew which is an
Anglo-Saxon word for "custom." Thew functions in much the
same way certain sorts of courtesy and custom function in
any culture or society. For example, every culture has its
own particular way of greeting others that are particular
to that culture. Every culture has certain taboos, that
though unwritten, are understood by the members of that
culture. Certain things are impolite to talk about in
public, one wears black to funerals and white to weddings
and so on are all examples of custom that you may be
familiar with. These things exist within Theodism as thew.
Thew is an effective way of maintaining harmony and
well-being of the theod.
Thew is simple to understand and elegant in handling very
complex and difficult situations. Once one learns and
begins to implement the tribe's thew in their lives it
becomes easy to spot instances where thew has been broken
within the theod and compensation of some sort is due by
the person breaking thew. Thew is applied to all in the
theod, from the lord down to the churl. The only people in
the theod not bound by thew is the thrall. The thrall does
not yet know thew and is not yet brought into a place where
he or she can effect the luck of the tribe in any
significant way. In many ways, thew is representative of
Theodism as whole. It is simple, elegant and beautiful in
its form and structure. It is simple to understand, once
you are acculturated to it, but very versatile and deep in
its implications.
I hope that you have gained a foundation for understanding
what Theodism is. Often Theodism is much like many other
things in life; hard to define but you know it when you see
it. We seek to worship the gods in a way that would be
recognizable to the arch-heathens. Our practice is tribal
and communal. We seek to be as authentic in that practice
as possible by the apprehension of the cultural identity of
the ancients and the way they viewed the world as well as
the way they lived in it. We worship and honor the Ese, the
Wen, our ancestors, the spirits of the land and the hearth.
We work to improve the well being of our families and our
theod. We function in a hierarchal structure with
reciprocal relationships where those in leadership
functions have responsibilities to those below them and
those above. Finally, we are bound by custom and tradition
to the ways of our ancestors and the ways of our theod that
are dynamic and flexible in a world that seems to be always
changing. We are heathens living in the modern world, not
modern people being heathen.
