Heathenry

Heathenry is the oldest belief in the land; it is the root of paganism. Heathenry is a spiritual practice, not an organized religion. It is practiced by individuals working independently, or informally allied for mutual support. There is no hierarchical structure.

Heathens are of the earth, one creature among many, and have little intellectualized morality; they do what feels right, following the directives of their own spiritual center. To heathens, every thing, every act, every breath is sacred. Or perhaps more accurately, it is not so much that everything is sacred to a heathen, but rather that nothing is profane ~ nothing ~ not killing, or illness, or anything else; everything belongs and has its proper place and time in the greater cycles.

Heathens have a strong sense of being part of a larger whole ~ of the tribe and of the earth. Their sense of self, their individuation, is not as great as with a more civilized people. This is how a heathen can, in the midst of battle fury, throw himself on a knight's spear, or in ritual, offer himself as a sacrifice for the good of the tribe.

Heathenism differs from paganism in several ways. Understanding comes from experience, where pagans also understand through philosophy. Heathenry is shamanic, personal and entrepreneurial where paganism is philosophical and hierarchical.

## Beliefs

Heathens realize that time is not linear, but instead follows a great cyclical pattern, like the seasons of the earth. Life is constantly created, changes and grows older, dies and returns again as new life; form is created, decays and is destroyed, and created again as new form. This same understanding applies to the progression of time, which heathens think of as a sort of Mythic Spiral. Time does not stretch off into the past and far ahead into the future; it spirals eternally around and around, passing simultaneously upwards and downwards ~ any point may touch any other point. Hence, in reality we all live in a sacred space and time where the mythic events of the ancient past still exist, and are still happening. In fact, time is not linear, and there is no ancient past ~ there is only now. Knowing this, the heathen fiosaiche can travel to any point on the spiral and meet the people there; he can talk with his ancestors.

Heathens do not proselytize; they do not attempt to convert others to their faith. In fact, they may not even consider that they have a faith; without the profane, faith is not necessary ~ this is simply the way things are. Without the profane, there is no original sin and no fall from grace, and thus no imperiled soul ~ we will all rejoin the world of spirit when we die. To a heathen there is no point to proselytizing, because heathens believe that ultimately the spiritual world will prevail, and that other religions are only aspects of the greater whole to which the heathen is privy.

### Cosmology

Heathen mythology helps the individual to understand his own spiritual makeup and the makeup of the cosmos. The Picts believe that they live and move within a three-tiered universe made up of the Upper, Middle and Underworlds, all connected by the Tree of Life. Every individual sits at the center of the Middleworld, where we live and breathe. The Otherworlds are perpetually overlapping with the Middleworld, such that they can be entered by those who know how to find the gates to them. The Upperworld is a place of stars and light. From it the whole Cosmos can be seen, and any part of it traveled to. The Upperworld is the home of powerful spirits; it can be reached by ascending the Tree of Life to its upper-most branches. The roots of the Tree lie in the Underworld. They house the spirits of earth and fire. The Underworld is the domain of the beasts. Within it lies the Well of Segais from which flow the Seven Rivers of Life that spread out from the Underworld to encase all the Otherworlds within a rainbow. The spirits of air and water, and all the samhladhs inhabit the rainbow. The ancestors live in the Underworld; It is from here that their teachings come.

These three worlds, all linked by the Tree of Life, are perceived by the heathen Picts as growing within the shell of a single hazelnut that balances on the lip of the Well of Segais, from which all knowledge comes. They believe that this image of reality contains the true, inner aspects of all beings, and it is within this reality that the heathen walks.

### Oral Tradition

Similar to paganism, heathenry is built entirely upon oral tradition. They do not have written religion or written laws. They believe that to commit a thing to writing is to give it power over you. Law and religion need to change as a peoples' condition and needs change. Writing a thing down does not make it Truth; its permanence is only illusion. Change is the way of things. Trying to make a thing permanent ensures that it will some day be wrong, and makes it more painful when change finally does come.

Heathens understand that the mind is not everything; real experiences can be and are had without the involvement of the mind or thought. Experience precedes and underlies thought. To them, the mind is like a flame dancing on the wick of a candle, and our soul ~ our true nature ~ is the candle itself. Spiritual knowledge cannot be grasped intellectually, but must be experienced to be understood. Therefore heathens believe that experience is the best means of education.

Heathens do not worship gods as we think of them; nor do they properly worship as we think of it. They are themselves spirits, and they entreat with other spirits like themselves. Of these spirits, some are large, some small, some good spirits and some bad. There exist spirits of ancestors, of animal masters, of woods and glens, of trees and standing stones. Everything is alive, and the world is made of spirit.

### History

The Picts, the primary adherents of heathenry, were the earliest people to live in Britain. When Brutus and his followers came to the land they brought their own pagan gods with them, and deified the essential aspects of nature that the heathens still entreat with in their primal form today.

## The Heathen Calendar

The heathen calendar is created from the ceaseless movement of the great annual seasons, and their relationship to other smaller cycles. It shows the positions and influences of all things. The calendar Is divided into four principal parts, the beginning of each corresponding to one of the festivals. These are:

* Imbolc (around 1st February) is when ewes give lamb. Winter eases, and new life comes with the spring. It is a time to perform augury for the coming seasons. At the Festival of Imbolc, at the end of the winter, a sacred blackbird may be released below an apple tree. The heathen onlookers carefully watch the bird, divining the coming year from what it does.
* Beltaine (around 1st May) begins summer. At this time major gateways to other worlds open and travel to other realms is easy. It is a time for coming to full strength and realizing desires.
* Lughnasadh (around 1st August) starts the time of harvest and tribal gatherings. At this fire festival responsibilities and commitments are assessed.
* Samhain (around 1st November) begins the new year. It is when the winter crops are sown, and time to clean out all things unwanted. The gates to the Otherworld stand wide open this night.

Though not marked with public ceremony, the solstices and equinoxes are observed, dividing the year into eight parts. They are: Spring Equinox (21st March), Summer Solstice (21st June), Autumn Equinox (21st September) and Winter Solstice (21st December).

The times of greatest influence of various beasts and plants, the hours of the day, seasons, and weather are also marked on the heathen calendar.

This primitive calendar has been adapted by the Cymric pagans who came after the Picts, although the heathen names are used.

## Magic

All heathens are privy to wisdom which may be mistaken for magic, but the fiosaiche (Pictish spirit-worker) is truly a person of magic. This individual has penetrated the invisible world, and journeyed to the realm of spirits and the Faerie realms on many occasions. On these journeys the fiosaiche makes pacts with the spirits that inhabit the Otherworld and learns their secret names. This knowledge gives him or her the ability to use the spirit's power in the physical realm. Nearly all magic is performed to help others, usually in the form of healing magic, and always requires rituals and ceremonies to make it work. Shamanic workings are a community event, with a whole family or tribe participates in the ceremonies. Typical magic is to cure sickness, heal a wound, calm or raise the wind, create fire, ensure the success of a hunt, or to grant fertility to a woman or beast.

## Heathen Virtues

The religious virtues for Heathens are: Vengeful, Honest, Proud, Arbitrary and Worldly. Heathens generally have only four of the above five personality traits as virtues, as the samhladh (clan spirit) of the clan has a trait that it personifies. Each samhladh listed has a single trait that it substitutes for one of the above traits.

The heathen virtues make sense in light of a culture that does not recognize a higher authority, and has no authority beyond the self and family. Value is personally determined, as is morality.

In this light, Vengeful is a positive trait when one considers that in heathen culture the individual has not invested a higher authority with the right to punish crime. If someone murders a Pict's brother, it is his right, his duty even, to punish the killer. Nobody else will do it for him. If he does not revenge the wrong, he is failing his family.

Honesty is a virtue because a person's word is their bond. Again, there is no authority to enforce agreements. Formal contracts, written or otherwise, are pointless without a higher authority to enforce them. People must rely upon reputation and honorable intentions; thus if someone is a know liar, no one will ever trust that person again. Dishonest people are unable to enter into social agreements with people who know them. And to people who don't know them, they are outsiders without rights. A person's good name is a very important possession.

Proud is another such virtue. If you don't state your worth, nobody else will state it for you. Modesty is not a virtue, because you are misrepresenting yourself. Proud does not mean lying, it means honestly presenting your worth.

Arbitrary is used as a virtue because all morality is from a personal or family viewpoint. The heathen has no care for somebody outside of his family structure, and would act arbitrarily towards them, not justly. They have no understanding of societal justice, just personal justice. In this use, Arbitrary refers to the heathen's treatment of outsiders. A heathen would still be just in dealing with family and clan members.

Worldly does not mean secular, and pious does not mean sacred. To a heathen, the sacred is everywhere and everything. The dualistic separation into the sacred and profane makes no sense to them. It is not that everything is sacred, it is that nothing is not sacred. Heathens do not follow the Christian concept of piety, in which they act pious at some times and impiously at others. Every act is a sacred act. The pious intellectualize the sacred and separate it from mundane experience. The heathen experience the sacred in every worldly act.

### Religious Bonus

The religious bonus is an attunement with nature that allows the worshipper to increase a particular skill by +3, or a statistic by +1. The increase must be appropriate to the individual's clan spirit, and may well wax and wane through the day depending on the position of the creature on the heathen calendar. For example, a heathen with a sow samhladh might increase his or her poetic improvisation skill.

## Ranks and Titles

There are no ranks in this religion, except whether one is a fiosaiche or not. Anyone might be an unsuspecting individual chosen by the unpredictable forces of the Otherworld, while someone who desires a shamanic life but is not chosen can never achieve enlightenment.