Devoting Time to Our Gods

Heathen Temple

This is a subject that is truly important to me, and one that is truly close to my heart. It is relevant to anyone of a religious or spiritual nature, and especially to pagans and heathens. For me, devoting time to my Gods would be like rule numero uno of any meaningful spiritual practice.

Why is it so important to devote ourselves to the Gods? The most common argument is that we simply need to devote ourselves, given the predominance of Christianity in the last centuries of western culture. In other words, the pagan and heathen gods need our attention because they have been neglected so long. But what does it say about our beliefs about the Gods when we feel that they are somehow less powerful for our neglect, or that they need us?

As a person of heathen faith, I do not feel the Gods need me to devote my time and attention to them in order to make them relevant. Indeed, I would not even begin to suggest such a thing to my Lady Freyja, for fear of her reaction. (I can hear her laughing in my head already) Devotion is not something that my Gods require, but it is something that they DESIRE.

In my mind, dedicated devotion does not mean I need to make the Gods more powerful by giving my energy to them. Rather, my devotion serves as the vehicle of their own power to manifest in this world. I truly believe the most powerful way to create change in this world is by allowing the energy of my Gods to flow through myself and into the mundane world. It also serves as a linkage, a bond, between myself and the Gods I call my own.

The three Norns weaving the threads of Wyrd

In ancient days, the heathen people believed that they were the children, the direct descendants, of the Gods themselves. The blood that flowed through there veins was the same blood as the Gods. In devotion, we are able to reconnect that link, and in turn rejoin our wyrd with that of the Gods themselves.

wyrd: a concept of fate or blood lineage, imagined as threads woven by three females called norns (fates) which create all events, that what was, that what is, and that what is becoming

Someone told me earlier this week that the serpent Nidhogg that gnaws on the the roots of the World Tree devours bloodlines, entire family lines, on a level we cannot even comprehend. I do not know if I believe this, but I do believe that we have a power to reconnect the links that are broken. Just as a split branch may one day grow together again, or a trunk grow around an injury, so can we heal the bonds that were broken by forced conversion to our ancestors. We can reclaim our place in the family of the Gods.

Devotion means making a concerted effort to reestablishing the link between myself and the divine. It means I am creating a relationship as well as creating a new path for wyrd to flow through. It means I am, as a woman, embracing the creative power within me without binding myself to a life of birthing life physically. This is an important reason I call Freyja my own Goddess. She is a mother, yet the word does not define her. She is a mother not only in the physical sense, but in the spirit of all she does.

My own colored rendering of Freyja, black and white image by  Lorenz Frolich (1895)

Devotion has a different meaning for me than the traditional christian ideal. As a pagan and a heathen, devotion to me is not a blind faith, nor a bended knee. It is a willingness to invest my time, effort, and action to my Gods. It is a devotion of loyalty to kin, and a promise to protect and shape wyrd into reality, for myself and my children, and those of the future.

In Frith,
Cena