Tue, 25 Jan 2005

End Times New Year's Resolutions

Here's a link to a very well done essay on Heathen eschatology over at The Juggler. This piece illustrates perhaps better than anything I've read recently the way that Heathens view myth as metaphor and allegory, rather than literal history/reality/prophecy. Personally, I find these kinds of interpetations to be much better communicators of Truth than dogmatic literalism.

Read the whole thing to see what I mean.

Unlike most in the pagan/heathen communities, we Asatruar spend quite a bit of time thinking about the end of the world. Oh, we're not obsessed with it by any stretch of the imagination. It's not like we're standing on the street corner, Poetic Edda in hand, screaming at passersby, "Axe age, wolf age, Fimbulwinter is upon us! It's not too late to return to your ancestral folkways! Repent!" (Not that such a pastime isn't without a certain perverse appeal, mind you.) Rather, our body of sacred lore has a rich eschatology in the form of the familiar Ragnarok story and discussions of various aspects of this myth are not at all uncommon in heathen circles.

(link) [The Juggler]

via Letter from Hardscrabble Creek

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