Reddit reviews A Practical Heathen's Guide to Asatru

Thanks for stopping by the sub, may I ask your age please?

If you are new to Heathenry perhaps you should begin with some core reading to better understand our relationship with the Gods? We don't (usually and generally) ask them for anything as individuals or pray to them like people do in other religions to their god(s). Expecting a gift like protection means earning it, through your deeds, reputation, and the gifting cycle of your Kindred and/or family. I suggest reading this book, to begin a better understanding

The reason so many go for the throat can be summed up in our feelings about syncretism and it's affect on our religion. Many, many Wiccans do the same with our religion as they do with so many others... They take and use the parts they like. This may be by using the runes, or calling to some of our gods (often as an aspect of the Wiccan Lord and Lady) or any other number of ways they can merely use some part of it without taking the whole. The problem here is that ours is not a syncretic religion... We believe that to remove a piece of it from the context of the whole, from the context of the culture that goes with it is to render it meaningless. Naturally, we find this offensive.

Compound this with the fact that any attempts to point this out, to try and explain why we find Wiccan use of our religious symbols, our gods etc... In their syncretic religion will almost without fail fall on deaf ears. Many of us have even been accused of intolerance for trying to stop Wiccans from using our religion piecemeal in some syncretic magpie spiritualism. The fact that we are religiously incompatible is laughed at by most Wiccans, who feel they know our religion better than we do.

And there's another one. When we see something being used incorrectly and try to point it out we're often shut down by the person using it and told some garbage about there being more than one way, or more than one understanding, or fed some lines about UPG. Sometimes we're even dismissed as being wrong about our own religion. That doesn't foster many feelings of goodwill.

So, the short of it is that a person, a religion or a culture can only be insulted so many times before they start to get automatically defensive.

As for good books to read as a starting place, I have lately been recommending A Practical Heathens Guide to Asatru by Patricia M. Lafayllve. It's a good basic text. It doesn't really get in depth on anything, but it can at least give a decent idea of how the modern heathen thinks.

And that's one thing to remember when dealing with us. It's not merely a religion, it's a culture. It's a different worldview. It's a different way of thinking about the world, and how we fit into it.