Within most of the modern-day manifestations of Germanic Heathenism, there seems to be an exagerrated amount of nostalgia in the sense of trying to “play” one set of ancestors or another, be those ancestors Scandinavian Vikings,ancient Anglo-Saxons, or another of the tribes that we at a Pan-Germanic level bear some relation to. But for those of us who are striving towards reconnecting with our ancestral ways through careful research and application of significant material at a practical level, a question must be asked: Can we duplicate things as they were when our ancestors venerated the Aesir & Vanir in various ways throughout our anient homelands? No. We cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be exact copies of any of the ancient cults of our ancestors. Several factors would prevent this from happening:

1. The evolution brought on by the introduction of new ideas and technologies: certain boundaries resulting from the "tribal" model are no longer present, and with this, there has been a definite shift in not only values and social structure, but in information across the spectrum from martial to magical to technological and beyond...we have to bear in mind that even if Christianity had not subjugated the ancient cults, the introduction of new ideas & technology from outside as well as from within would have had some evolutionary effect upon matters to some extent.

2. The gaps in information that we are naturally going to run into these days where data relevant to the ancient cults is concerned: if by some freak and farfetched accident we were all forced to revert to a tribal model next week or next year, we still couldn't duplicate the ancient cults "word for word"; there are certain things about the ancient cults that we are never going to be able to exhume from books, Runestones, grave finds, or folklore. Some information (from objective sources) is inevitably lost.

3. There is some stuff that history has recorded in big blazing "we shall not forget" type letters that we really shouldn't entertain repeating: while there are some characteristics of those who came before us (who we were, in fact) that merit a place with us today, there are some obvious traits that would in the short and long-term be counterproductive both personally and collectively.

          My personal understanding of things is this: we are taking a common essence and model with very old roots in our heritage & souls and working with it. While we recognize where this essence has made itself manifest in That-Which-Has-Become (the past) through the study of lore and history, we also recognize that we cannot reasonably hope to live out in the wilderness raiding cattle, sail the seas in dragon-helmed longships, or drop human sacrifices into peat bogs. We must reach back and take up this primal essence within ourselves as the power source that it is while simultaneously recognizing the "blind spots" of those who have gone before us, and adjust accordingly. More specifically, we must draw up this primal power that dwells within us, recognize it within the historical model, and refine it with all the wisdom of things both past and present at our disposal. Some blatantly refuse to recognize this, and instead choose to paint an idealized picture of the past that they wish to "recreate" in the Objective, often attempting to completely divorce themselves from anything outside their bubble, in the process becoming someone who our ancestors would have looked upon with utter contempt. Jung said:

           "We cannot possibly get beyond our present level of culture unless we receive a powerful impetus from our primitive roots. But we shall receive it only if we go back beyond our cultural level, thus giving the suppressed primitive man in ourselves a chance to develop. We need some new foundations. We must dig down to the primitive in us, for only out of the conflict between civilized man and the Germanic barbarian will there come what we need: a new experience of god."

....Jung's words contain a powerful key, but it is a key that we must use with wisdom in order to unlock the doors that lead to victory rather than defeat.

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