The Heretical Heathen Podcast

Last year's spiritual retreat felt random—people taking classes, no real connections. This year was different. Ceremonial magicians and serious witches were drawn to the same event, clustering together in ways that couldn't be coincidence. It felt like the Norns themselves were weaving the threads. We also visit Gettysburg, a paranormal capital and historical crossroads, where the monuments themselves carry esoteric imagery. This episode explores the synchronicities that guided us, how serious practitioners find each other, and what happens when fate actively orchestrates convergence.

What are the Norns, really? And if they're weaving fate, do we have any agency? This episode explores the ancient concept of wyrd and destiny through a modern occultist lens. We discuss what the Norns actually are, how to think about fate in contemporary practice, how fate shows up in personal life, and most importantly—the techniques and practices we've developed to influence, redirect, or work consciously with destiny rather than simply submit to it. Fate isn't fixed. It's negotiable.

in this episode I'm reacting to a mixed bag of TikToks that popped up on my FYP — and one topic completely derailed me (in the best way): whether Norse paganism/Asatru was ever actually a unified religion.

Spoiler: I don't think it was. A lot of people assume ancient Scandinavians shared one coherent pantheon and belief system, but that picture largely comes from Snorri Sturluson's 13th-century Prose Edda — written centuries after Christianization, by a Christian author compiling material for poets. What we actually see in the archaeological and historical record is way more regional, scattered, and l...

After giving an offering to Hati during a lunar eclipse, we explore what it means to work with chthonic beings—the chaotic, underworld forces that many Western practitioners avoid. Getting into right relation with these powers is possible, but not without risk. This episode covers the genuine dangers: how careless work can create astral egregores that feed off your energy, how these beings can become parasitic attachments, and what "right relation" actually means. Not all sacred work is safe work. We discuss the precautions, the signs of trouble, and why understanding chthonic forces matters for serious practitioners.

Western paganism's reliance on book transmission creates a problem: ego inflation and spiritual orphaning. But other religious traditions—Buddhism, Hinduism—have survived millennia with living initiatory lineages that don't require you to adopt their pantheons. This episode argues that heathen and Platonic practitioners should thoughtfully adopt complementary practices from these traditions: breathing work, body scanning, contemplative disciplines. These aren't cultural appropriation—they're universal human practices that strengthen ritual, reduce suffering, and create genuine community transmission. We explore what a living tradition looks like, and how Western paganism can learn from religions that actually survived the centuries intact.

The county fair mirrors meditation practice. Just as you focus on a single point while navigating internal distractions—discomfort, unwanted memories, seductive pleasures—the fairgrounds pulls your attention in countless directions: food, music, crowds, chaos. Some things push you away, others pull you in. This is Odin's journey through the nine realms: learning to stay centered when everything demands your attention. The fair teaches what meditation teaches: presence amid distraction.

After some drama in the Platonist community involving an infiltrator, we turn to Hagalaz—and discover something far more significant. The scrying journey: walking through a storm, encountering a luminous Buddha face in the clouds, following her through a cornfield to a temple where she offers water. Then: cosmic Odin, waiting. "Welcome to the second aett," he laughs.

After covering frustrations with the Heathen Golden Dawn system, a listener reached out asking for balance. This episode explores the genuine strengths of the practice: what it offers, why it works for serious practitioners, and what Western paganism gains by having structured, systematic ceremonial work. Sometimes the criticisms are valid—and so are the benefits.

After discovering proper meditation practice through Dr. Jared Jones' Buddhist-informed approach, we scry Wunjo—the rune of joy and fellowship. The journey: a bar, a wintery cliff, a fall through seasons, emergence in a spring pond where people bathe in harmony. But then comes a theater, and a jarring rejection—figures physically force you back to your astral temple. They don't want you there. Wunjo reveals itself as more complex than simple joy: it's about belonging, about community that includes and excludes, about the cost of genuine fellowship.

What happens when the gods stop speaking? When dreams cease, when the usual channels of connection close, when you're left with only silence and practice. This episode explores the dark night of the soul—spiritual dryness, disconnection, the absence of numinous experience. We discuss what this means, how to maintain practice when there's no feedback, what Eastern traditions like Hinduism understand about this that Western paganism often misses, and what the actual failings of contemporary pagan communities reveal about spiritual maturity. Sometimes the silence is where real work begins.

Most ritual systems teach you what to do and why. This episode covers two fundamental rituals adapted to heathenry—the lesser ritual of the pentagram and the middle pillar—and explores the frustrations with the practice. Real ritual demands understanding, not blind repetition.

What happens when you offer blood in exchange for light? This Gebo scrying session explores the rune's deepest power: the gift that demands reciprocity, the sacrifice that transforms, and what emerges when material form dissolves into pure luminescence. Gebo shows us that true exchange is never simple—it's a channel for transfiguration.

everyone thinks the jotnar are just Norse monsters - marvel extras waiting to get punched by a man with a hammer. Theyre not. The word itself means eater. This episodes focuses on the giants, what they are, and a unique look at their nature.

In the dark woods, you light a fire that spreads to form a sacred circle. An ominous voice speaks. We explore what fire truly is, and how Kenaz teaches us to illuminate, protect, and transform through controlled power.

Most people approach rune magic through divination - casting runes to see what they "say" about the day. But that's backward. You end up projecting meaning onto events, getting lost in interpretation. My approach inverts this: meditate on a rune, then observe your actual day and find events that genuinely correspond to it. This teaches you to spot runic forces and archetypal patterns already at work in reality. Once you develop that skill, you look inward and recognize those same patterns in yourself - your behaviors, your patterns, your shadows. And once you see them clearly, you can use...

What do you encounter when you scry Raidho? This episode documents an unfolding vision: meeting a spirit guide dressed in white, descending through a winter landscape and into darkness, standing before Hel herself in the depths, and being carried upward along Yggdrasil by a cosmic bird to return home. Raidho reveals itself not as simple forward movement, but as a cyclical descent and return - a shamanic journey through multiple realms. We explore what the rune shows about true travel: not linear progression, but the spiraling wheel that moves through worlds.

Music: https://www.chosic.c...

A heathen watches Naruto and discovers something deeper than a shounen battle anime. The series isn't really about its protagonists at all - Naruto and Sasuke are containers for something far larger: the eternal balancing of opposing forces. We explore the series as a meditation on suffering, examine Itachi Uchiha as an archetypal complex made flesh, and trace the Sharingan's connection to Maya - the illusory veil that appears across heathen cosmology and Western occultism. What does this anime reveal about the nature of perception, power, and the forces that move through us?

Music: https://www.chosic...

After appearing on Jesse's Random Heathen Ramblings podcast, I wanted to expand on some key points from our conversation. Heathenry has become ossified by dogma and textual authority, but living practice demands mystery. I also explore why aliens and anomalies might actually be our modern attempt at an authentic spirituality.

Check out the original conversation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2bCpTgIZc612Ld4o5CbgFp?si=bN4vxftBS-eEpVPrLBSS-g

Music: https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

What do you see when you scry Ansuz, the rune of divine speech and inspired communication? This episode documents a scrying session with the fourth rune of the Elder Futhark - exploring the visions and insights that emerge when gazing into Odin's breath. We discuss Ansuz's connection to language, prophecy, and the creative power of the word itself.

Music: https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ 

Thurisaz is the rune of the giant, the hammer, the thorn — primal and protective, it guards as much as it reveals. In this episode, we bring that dual nature into our scrying practice, learning to work with Thurisaz not as obstacle but as guardian of genuine sight.

Music: https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ 

In Plato's Gorgias, Socrates reveals what sophistry really is — not wisdom, but a turning away from the good that quietly hollows out the soul. When we choose the appearance of virtue over its reality, we don't just deceive others; we lose something in ourselves. This episode sits with that ancient warning and asks what it means for us today.

Music: https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ 

Scrying the rune Uruz - primal strength, vital force, and the untamed power of the aurochs. We explore what emerges when you gaze into this rune's depths and how its wild energy manifests in vision.

Music: https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ 

The runes aren't just symbols to memorize or cast - they're living forces that can be embodied. Rune yoga, or stadha, is the practice of assuming physical postures that mirror the shapes of individual runes, combining breath work and focused intention to internalize their power. We discuss the origins of this practice, how it differs from meditation or visualization alone, and practical techniques for incorporating runic postures into your own work. Whether you're new to the runes or looking to deepen your practice, embodying the staves offers a direct, visceral path to understanding.

Music: https://w...

The art of seeing beyond sight. We discuss scrying - using mirrors, water, crystals, and other reflective surfaces to induce visions and access hidden knowledge. A practical guide to one of the oldest forms of divination.

music by Sonder by Purrple Cat | https://purrplecat.com/
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Before he was the most controversial general in Athens, Alcibiades was just a young man with massive ambitions and an even bigger ego. In this episode, we break down Plato’s Alcibiades I. We explore the famous "Socratic intervention" where Socrates humbles a future superstar by asking a simple, devastating question: How can you govern a city if you don’t yet know how to govern yourself?

bedtime after a coffee by ikkunn (Barradeen) | https://soundcloud.com/ikkunwastaken/
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Music promoted by https://www.chosi...

In an age of spiritual consumerism, can you simply choose any pantheon that appeals to you? Or do the gods of your ancestors offer particular channels of divine contact carved through millennia of reciprocal shaping? This episode makes the case for folkish heathenry - not as supremacy, but as rootedness in the specific paths our peoples have already cleared toward the sacred.

Incantation by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
 

Most heathens blót because their ancestors did. And that's a real answer. But it's not the only one. In this episode we dig beneath the surface of sacrificial practice into the gift economy of Norse culture, Iamblichus and the theurgic tradition, henosis, sunthemata, and what it actually means to participate in the pattern of creation. Blót isn't just tradition. It's cosmology in action.

Music: https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ 

A systematic examination of arguments claiming European paganisms cannot be closed practices. Through logical analysis, I demonstrate how each argument—from colonization to white supremacy to historical precedent—fails under scrutiny. What emerges is a pattern of sophistry masking racial double standards. A call for intellectual consistency and equal treatment in pagan discourse.

Legendary Epic Heroic | Heroic by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode, I critique Seðian philosophy as presented by the Norroena Society, showing three fatal logical flaws: they deny unity exists while constantly affirming it, they reduce gods to physical beings (which is just atheism), and they deny objective morality while making moral prescriptions. I offer the Platonic framework as a coherent alternative that preserves real divinity and real ethics.

Sovereign by Kevin MacLeod | https://incompetech.com/
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode, I share my personal journey into Heathen esotericism - from being the weird kid into ghosts and the paranormal, to discovering ceremonial magic and Heathenry, to synthesizing them into the Heathen Golden Dawn tradition. If you've ever wondered how someone ends up practicing Norse ceremonial magic, this is that story.

Hearts of Iron by Alex- Productions | https://onsound.eu/
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
 

I tackle one of modern Heathenry's most controversial topics: working with Loki and the Jotun. Drawing on cross-cultural wisdom traditions and observable patterns, I explore why "you become what you worship" and what happens when people align themselves with forces of chaos - especially those already struggling with mental health.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/redemption

License code: 7OHARP6824EQOXRK

Welcome to Heretical Heathenry! An introduction to the podcast, the host, and why we need a different conversation about Heathen practice and occultism.