Norse Paganism | How to Interpret Signs from the Gods

hello my name is jacob and i'm a norse pagan and today i'm here to talk about by odin's beard a crow [Music] odin send me your sign what do you have for me odin sorry about that you know how it is you see a sign from the gods and you just gotta chase after it so let me try this one more time hello my name is jacob and i am a norse pagan and by frair's follow us another crow okay for real this time i really just wanted to have fun in the beginning of this episode because over the last couple of years of operating the wisdom of odin i think the number one most asked question i get still to this day is about signs from the gods and really i think it's people asking me if i think something truly is a sign from the gods um and so i i really do think that in the beginning it can be really confusing to tell what is and is not a sign we tend to look at every single bird and think oh my gosh it's a sign from odin so i really just wanted to do that funny bit in the beginning to kind of show that yes when you first start this path it is hard to tell what is actually a sign and you really can't look at every single bird you see as a sign from the gods i mean i'm looking at two more crows over there three more there's like four ducks over here you would never get anywhere if everything was assigned from the gods the other side of this at least for me personally is there was a lot of signs i missed because i wasn't paying attention because i wasn't looking at the natural world and the secret to this really is just being honest with yourself about the experiences you have you can't just look at every single crow and think it's a sign from odin but you also have to recognize when you do see a crow in a very peculiar way and it makes you feel a very certain way that it may very well be a sign from the gods so my name is jacob and i am a norse pagan and today in this video we'll be talking about how to interpret signs from the gods [Music] literally as i stopped filming look at these adorable little ducklings where's your mother is that your mother i don't even know what these are these ducks oh my gosh they're so cute look at them go on the water friends oh my gosh sometimes nature is just cute too so there is actually a reason that i came here specifically to the english gardens in munich to film this video and that is because there are so many birds here so many different types there are geese everywhere there are crow everywhere there's magpie and some birds i can't even explain these don't even look like geese from the united states but they're still geese regardless if you're walking through a park that you know there's a lot of birds if there's a lot of crows and you see one the chances are it's probably not a sign from the gods now it could be you just need to be honest with yourself the way i think we should look at it is nature doesn't bind to our will yes occasionally in the idea that is a sign from the god that god would send something to you to show you that they want your attention that they're listening or something like that or you need to pay attention to something but otherwise nature doesn't just binge the will of man we're it's an animistic faith we live in unity with all that is around us so to think that all of these geese are here because of me it's a very selfish mindset and so think about it like that like nature does not bend to our will now sometimes it can send us messages but we are not the lords of all that is one of the beautiful parts about this faith is that we don't think we're above the natural world and so when we're walking among places like this with the geese dodging their poop we're living in harmony with them that's the goal now let's say a goose lands on top of your car and stares at you that might be a sign from the gods so like with most videos i want to begin with what we know historically is there any evidence within the past within any writings or artifacts that show us signs and omens were really that important to the people of the pre-christian scandinavian and germanic past we do have a little bit of information from germania that tacitus wrote during the time of rome now as always with germania this is a secondhand account he didn't technically see these things for himself but it's really one of the only accounts we have of germanic practices um really in this amount of depth as well so i do apologize i am reading this on my kindle um i don't have my library with me so i've been having to find ways to be creative and uh and get these books otherwise so in his description of the germanic people he says no people are more addicted to divination by omens and lots and then it goes into one of the few accounts we have of divination being used now it doesn't mention the runes specifically it mentions cutting up a twig and using that for divination but after describing how they do this it says if the result prove unfavorable there is no more consolation on the same affair that day if it is a good reading a confirmation by omens is still required it goes on to say in common with other nations germans are acquainted with the practice of arguing from notes and the flight of birds now it also goes on to feature other ways they divinate including using prisoners and horses drawn by chariots but really this is all we get as far as the signs we also know from germania later on that prophecies omens and things like that were taken very seriously and women were often often considered the most holy and most sacred and divine beings within pre-christian germanic society now sadly the other historical account i have at least written down in a book i do not have with me this is a book called myths and simples and pagan europe by h.r ellis davidson if you haven't already i do highly recommend it it's one of the most inspirational novels i've read through and the most well researched books but it's also very condensed on pre-christian scandinavian and germanic religion because it draws from celtic germanic and norse beliefs to give us a better picture of what these practices would have been once again i do apologize i can't actually show you the exact passage or read it to you um but i trust me it is in there um and this is where i'm pulling this from uh obviously not in exact detail i did look on kindle it's not available or i couldn't find a pdf version um but it does talk about how a woman in iceland had a dream about a family spirit that came to her and told her that her i believe one of her family members died um in norway and then she found out some days later that yes her family member had died and so she received this message in a vision beforehand so again very small account but it's interesting to see that this idea of spirits being able to visit us in our dreams and tell us of things that do become true give us a slight amount of a prophecy does exist historically or at least within one tale um and i you know and again i don't have the exact information for you but this is something i have seen before that dreams and what happened in dreams was considered important to the germanic and scandinavian people before the time of christ from what i could tell from again my limited amount of research i can do here this is what historically we do know about divination and signs is that it seems like they were highly regarded and that they were seen as important now this is really helpful because otherwise we would say like our signs really that helpful are signs legitimate and i think that's something that um people coming to this video people coming to this faith for the first time have a question about are signs legitimate are we just making them up are we seeing what we want to see but from what we can tell historically is that signs have been seen as important all the way back to the pre-christian germanic and scandinavian times i want to take a brief pause from today's video to discuss something that is really inspiring to me and also kind of sad is the fact that yes germany was converted before the viking age really between 600 and 800 ce was really the conversion window of paganism within the german region but you see a lot of things that to me feel like they still come from that pagan time things like this right here in front of me so this was built in 1724. i can read nothing else on it and it appears to have a figure of a woman here at the top um it could be a minor somebody to a king i mean 1724 most people weren't building personal monuments especially in places like a park so it's hard to say i really don't know what this is but imagine if this was still a pagan thing if if germany was never converted things like this would probably be all over the place just to deities you know maybe a small statue to freya here or just a monument to ancestors i mean you have this big old tree next to it as well so it's sad because i i wish i mean obviously any of us probably wish that paganism lived on you know more successfully into our modern age because i do wonder as many wonder what the world would be like today honestly probably chaos um but still i it's a hope for the future a hope for the future that i see more things like this um within my lifetime that are devoted to pagan subjects you know i would love to build things like this so people could come and just give offerings once again in peace before filming this video i actually did put a poll out on instagram to hear what signs people saw the most in this faith at least today and within this video today i really want to talk about the most common signs people have seen to really kind of cover this subject as best i can so number one and unsurprisingly is birds typically crows ravens or hawks seem to be the biggest ones people generally see obviously crows and ravens um being with odin and then even hawks being with freya um this is something i've experienced in my own path as well and we can see why i mean odin's ravens are one of the most recognizable features about him and so it makes sense that odin's ravens who travel the world to bring back information to odin would be a messenger for him but also just like i said in the beginning of this video just be honest with yourself when you have those experiences now freya i've had this experience as well in a video i've actually made i think it was almost a year ago now where i had my first fray experience i saw either a hawk or a falcon actually take up a squirrel into a tree um and this was actually the first time i had a connection with freya now this kind of stuff happens all the time somewhere in the world a falcon or hawk just swooped up another squirrel into a tree so what makes that a sign i think it's because we have to think who is the viewer i mean the whole saying of like if a tree falls in the woods does it really make a noise if no one's there to witness it same thing with these moments you know these are brief second moments that you have been given the privilege to see and i think that's what makes it special to us is that we see these very unique moments and these very small moments of life that really make it amazing i mean think about like national geographic or any kind of documentary made about nature they're capturing these very specific moments and usually they sit there probably for hours waiting for something to happen and the moment something happens in nature it's so quick that you know you blink and you miss it kind of thing so i really do think that's why we see it as a sign when we are allowed the chance to see these things and so um you know the most memorable experience for me at least having a raven like an actual raven involved not just a crow is when i actually got this tattoo in colorado i was there to see the wardroom concerts they're already a really exciting experience and then you know i went to go get this tattoo i think it was right after the show and um right after we got done we went outside to smoke a cigarette and as soon as we opened the door me and the tattoo artist walked out and i hear like that and i looked my right and that is when i saw my first true raven my colorado raven i mean its wingspan was massive and then it like fluttered its wings and flew away into the distance and to me that was an approval of the tattooed so to speak um and so you know that was always a special moment to me that is the key phrase though visions and signs are for you and one of the my problems with a lot of things and especially as we move into the dream conversation and visions is when we use our signs and our personal experiences to gain an edge on a conversation to gain an edge on our on an argument you say well i received a sign from odin oh i had a dream from freya to me this is a dishonorable use of the signs and visions were given these are very personal things and so that's why it's been troublesome for me to talk about this because ultimately it is up to you whether something is a sign or not which can sound like a fairy tale or a fantasy but that really is how it works now obviously in the pre-christian germanic and scandinavian times this was seen quite differently they were you know seen as you know an active part of society but it was also much more trusted than was that a sign so i have absolutely no way to prove this to you but i literally just filmed an entire segment after the trumpet thing i said something along the lines oh i took that as a sign i shouldn't film there so i moved locations then i came here and did a whole segment on birds on historical things and how you should trust your gut blah blah and then like a fly flew in front of my face i'm like some people would take this as loki and then my camera shut off and i lost everything so i honestly don't know to me that was i don't even know what that means but it feels very peculiar again maybe my camera just shut off like i don't know why it's working now i thought the memory was full but it seems to be working um you know i don't know but when all these variables come together fly in my face camera shuts off it makes you think and that's really the best thing i can say in this video is that you really have to study it yourself and be honest with yourself and i think the best thing i said in the clip that is now lost forever into the ether is that when you see something in the woods when you come to me and you say i saw a rune in the trees i saw on zeus what do you think that means i could of course give you my interpretation of what that means but you know that's not being fair to you because if you felt something in that moment if you felt like you saw answers to the trees and you know anzus means wisdom then maybe you already know the answer you're just seeking validation and i think that's the biggest thing is that we think we're crazy when we get into this path when we start having these moments when you start seeing ravens and you start seeing runes in the trees you feel crazy and so you seek that validation from others you seek validation from other practitioners other people in the community but the biggest thing the biggest piece of advice i can give you is trust yourself you know don't think everything is a sign but when you see something that you really know deep down into your gut that it is a sign then it is to you and that is what truly matters a brief break to talk about my youtuber due diligence please make sure you're liked and subscribed and all that youtuber nonsense i have to say that is important if you enjoy the wisdom of odin even more and you love watching me jump across massive rivers please think about donating to patreon it's the only way i'm able to do this full-time and i make sure there's plenty of benefits for you as well including our community discord and early access videos i will also probably put the bloopers from today's video because there has been so many of them so if you want to see those bloopers and want to support me at the same time please think about going to patreon to do so otherwise back to today's video i do want to make sure i cover the other things that were brought up in that instagram poll as well um things that were lost in that deleted video but the second thing brought up in connection with birds very similar is thunderstorms or other natural elements such as that um these natural elements definitely seem to be something that people connect with very often um even signs from the gods um little ducks that just go i don't know what those are but yes thunderstorms definitely seem to be something people connect to very obviously with thor not every single deity has these natural elements that are easy to kind of interpret but many of them do i mean things like freyr and i've even heard like etheune have connections to rain because of like fertility and things like that but this is definitely when we start losing the historical context and we start pooling in people's personal experiences you know when a hundred people say hey when i see a dove i feel you know frigg then maybe those hundred people can convince someone else you know what maybe doves do connect with frigg and i think this is where you get into the upg versus vpg thing where it's like something that just kind of happened to you is your unverified personal noses and then when you have a vpg which is a verified personal noses where a bunch of people have had a similar experience that's really what we dive into when it comes to signs is you hear a bunch of people or a group of people have had similar experiences by seeing something therefore when you see it you feel that connection as well and i mean again i just want to make sure we draw that line historically yes we know signs were a thing we know signs were important but when it comes to specific details on signs that's when we really are just going off of personal experiences having said that i want to make sure that we talk about the other things people have brought up specifically things like thunderstorms being connected to thor this is something that we can definitely derive from history um and just from personal practices it seems like you know thor is tied to thunder and so when you hear it you can feel connected to him but just with like the birds it doesn't mean every thunderstorm is thor not every crash of thunder or lightning is necessarily for you but if you feel connected to it it most likely is for you just again be honest about those personal experiences don't expect every thunderstorm to bend to your will nor be there for a sign for you but occasionally they can be there for you for a moment with you and thor and that's why i think it's important when you are feeling disconnected to the gods things like thunderstorms are great because any time you go out you pour a beer out for thor and you drink with them i really think you're going to have an amazing experience another element that was brought up is something i've mentioned briefly in this video so far is runes now this is definitely things we don't know historically we barely understand the runes historically in the first place from what we can tell historically the runes really just were an alphabet now we know the runes existed um the alphabet runes existed at the same time as divination and lots and things like that obviously you have the mentioning of the runes and have them all and things like that so we we can kind of infer that the runes were used for divination but the actual specific purposes of each rune is kind of lost to us and this is something that has been you know gathered by multiple individuals over the past few hundred years and again i have several vid i have several videos on the runes if you want to check those out but as far as what the runes mean in signs really this is definitely up to you it's not something i really look too deeply in i mean shoot even today i saw a thurizas or what i interpreted as a theory's eyes in the form of a twig on the side of a lake now does that mean anything to me did i have an experience with it no i mean it was kind of cool like almost like an eye spy like hey i found the rune in nature you know seeing runes in nature is cool but as far as signs from the gods i don't personally put much weight about uh i don't personally put much weight behind it some people do but historically we really can't tell this was something that was important to the pre-christian scandinavian and germanics people and maybe it could have been but it never was recorded again something we've kind of touched on a little bit in this video so far is something else people have brought up and that is dreams slash visions and this is definitely where honesty is very important when you have these dreams or visions you know they really are for you and i i personally had dreams that i would consider visions because they were so in depth i mean it's something that it really felt like i was waking up from another life and this is definitely again this is something that's really hard to talk about because for me visions are for you are personal and so when you start sharing them with others it can sound arrogant or selfish because you're saying oh well the gods visited me in a dream you know i'm special i mean you know that's what it comes off to me and i i feel like that's how it would come off if i talked about my dreams or visions of the gods so i keep those for myself i mean they you know the gods choose to visit you and so therefore it's for you not necessarily for everyone else to hear um now obviously we had that historical story of someone hearing about a family member dying and so you know certain visions and dreams can come to you like that and that's really up to you to interpret i mean i had a dream about my grandfather dying you know a month ago but he's fine you know it's not like it's happened now will my grandfather die eventually of course and you know that's something in my subconscious i'm worried about i don't want my grandfather to die you know typically we don't want most of our family to die or our loved ones and so having dreams slash nightmares about family members dying can be really complicated when you're a pagan because you take it as a vision just because you have a dream that is very traumatic and very real doesn't necessarily make it a vision again this is just something that is is really hard to talk about and you really just need to go throughout the faith go up go throughout this and have these experiences have those traumatic dreams at the same time of having an actual vision and knowing the difference it's really hard for me to to tell you what is different about them i think the biggest problem for me when it comes to dreams and visions is defining what makes them different what makes a dream a fantasy you know just something you see at night a dream and what turns that into a vision when it's so real that you feel like it's a sign from the gods from the spirits from the ancestors and that's you know it's a really hard definition because again it's a personal experience and i think it's really up to you to define the difference um you know i've had you know hundreds of sleeps since becoming a pagan and hundreds of dreams but what makes those dreams over here and what makes those three visions that i personally experience visions you know and that's something that i've just had to go through myself um you know i've had a very fantastical dreams about you know drinking with the gods or seeing you know thor in the skies but i know their dreams i'm just honest with myself about those experiences i've heard some pretty crazy stories from people in this community about you know especially from people that first start you know they really start consuming the content they start reading the mythology they start watching vikings they start listening to wardrunna and also they start having these dreams and they start seeing things like the gods or fenrir which is uh often common one people see fenrir in a dream and they automatically think that means they need to start worshiping fenrir this is something we're going to talk about in a podcast very soon because it's something that is becoming almost a problem is i think a lot of people are having these fantasy dreams and aren't being honest with themselves about them not being you know real experiences but again this is something that makes it so complicated i don't want to devalidate somebody who really thinks that they have had a vision an honest vision you know again just be honest with yourself but i also don't want people to think by watching this video that every dream they have every time they see the gods in a dream that makes it a vision you know it's a very fine line again biggest thing about this video is personal honesty but also not imposing those things on other people which is something i touched on earlier um just a little bit and i i really do think that's a problem in the community that we could face is uh when people say no this was a vision you know i had a vision from odin he told me this and there's no other way and you can't deny it because it's mine it's my vision i mean visions are your own visions are for you but don't impose and make other people believe you you know um you know like i said i've had visions but i've not really talked about that i think i made an instagram post once and i'm not like shaking people like you need to believe me believe me like how dare you devalidate my experiences like be honest be respectful and be kind with what the gods give you if they choose to give you a moment of their time in a vision or a dream honor and respect that and and don't weaponize that against other people but just enjoy this faith go through the motions go through the steps and throughout your experiences throughout the years through the months and the days and the many dreams you will learn what really is a vision and what just is a fantasy and that's really the best way i can end this video on dreams on visions on signs but thank you for joining me for this video and through the hijinx of all that has happened i hope you've enjoyed the funny moments i hope i've been able to share this topic well it's something that i've wanted to talk about for a while because it's a question i get a lot but there is so many different variables to to consider the historical the the modern the personal experiences the honesty i mean there's so much wrapped into this subject so i hope i've been able to encapsulate it well in this video but ultimately i want to say it again just be honest with yourself be respectful of other people's practices and don't impose your views on specific things on other people thank you so much for joining me for this video and until next time and until the hall skull my name is jacob and i am a norse pagan and today i want to talk about those golden gates flying above me [Music] you

Channel: Jacob Toddson

Views: 81,834

Keywords: pagan, Paganism, Norse Paganism, Norse, Norse myth, Norse mythology, asatru, Viking, Vikings, heathen, heathenry, books, list, Odin, Thor, Freya, gods, old gods, religion, wicca, Wiccan, shaman, shamanism, Nordic, yule, pagan holidays, yuletide, winter, pagan christmas, holidays, yggrasil, offering, sacrifice, heilung, ritual, Asatru for beginners, Asatru ritual, Asatru explained, Asatru religion, Norse paganism for beginners, norse pagan ritual, Norse Pagan Religion, norse pagan, the wisdom of odin

Id: 4aMDT-DlBTI

Length: 24min 58sec (1498 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021