What is Rokkatru?

Hello friends how are you? My name is Arith Häger and today I’m going to talk about Rökkatru On the previous video I’ve talked about Asatru and I was only concerned with the understanding of that religion so I was completely impartial as much as I could so that my own perspectives wouldn't diverge from the concept of that religion I wanted to show you what Asatru was all about, the basics, and giving you a glimpse of the modern understanding of northern European pagan traditions, through the modern reconstruction - religious reconstruction - which is Asatru Today I will take a different approach I will tell you what Rokkatru is but I will also share with you my own understanding of that spirituality, precisely because it is a spirituality and not a religion, so in its essence it’s free from a religious structure and becomes something more personal and something we can reflect upon Rokkatru isn’t just a spirituality but it’s also highly philosophical So with no more delay, let’s get started As you might have noticed the word Rokkatru sounds somewhat familiar because it’s very similar to the word Ragnarok I've talked about Ragnarok before Rök meaning Doom but somehow there was a certain confusion with the word Rökkr which means Twilight so Ragnarok wrongly became translated as Twilight of the Gods but on the other hand, surprisingly, that wrong translation actually applies pretty well to the entire concept of Ragnarok and Rokkatru Here’s why: In Rokkatru, the main focus of the word is in the concept of Twilight, Shadow and Darkness Twilight represents the coming of darkness, the end of a day, light fades and night covers the world which metaphorically represents the fading of the power of the gods of Asgard which are gods linked to light, the power of the sun, order, the manifestation of the social life in a society and the need to maintain order or everything falls into chaos The twilight itself is that very moment of the day between two realities something that links two worlds, two phases of the day, day and night so twilight is very much like dawn, it is the time for a lot of activity, a lot of life because nocturnal animals awake, while diurnal animals are still around and begin to retreat to spend the night resting so in this moment both nocturnal and diurnal creatures meet and are active before the world is consumed by total darkness it’s the time of the day of the meeting of two very different worlds Perhaps in our modern view of the world it is difficult to understand this but nowadays for most of us the day begins at dawn, it makes sense We wake up, go to work, go about our business and when night comes it’s time to sleep so twilight in a modern perspective means the end of the day and between being asleep and then awake, there is nothing and at dawn with the breaking of a new light, the day begins But to our pagan ancestors twilight seemed to be precisely the opposite from our modern perceptions The day ending with the sunset, and beginning with the twilight The night came before the day, but night was already the new day The first calendars where moon calendars in prehistoric times our ancestors moved during the night, in darkness to avoid being seen by their worse predators, other humans The pagan festivities began at night before the day of the festival, and so on So Rokkatru is much more focused on a primitive view of the world rather than the concept of the world from the point of view of civilizations when the mind of our ancestors started to change our daily routines based on the sun and light when we progressively started to shut ourselves from the natural world The night became distant, the world of wild beasts, unseen dangers We have shut ourselves in our civilized centres and abandoned the primitive instincts we have abandoned our connection with the natural world and order became the main priority because in our civilized cages our raw primitive instincts still pulse and hunger for freedom so we have built for ourselves a civilized order to maintain the beast within and so we started to worship the gods of order and light and the gods that in their Might they seemed to bring balance to the world but such gods are in their essence the personification of an order we have imposed ourselves , so we do not stray from the course of the civilized world so we don’t go back to our primal instincts This is twilight, Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods because it’s the end of order, the end of the power of the gods and the power is given to the first gods that were here before the gods of order The power goes back to the first primitive beings before the Aesir came and imposed their own power over the other races The power returns to the primal beings who predate the more familiar Aesir and Vanir pantheon of deities These beings are often the spirits of primordial concepts of the elements and the other side of reality which in our modern societies became a taboo such as death for instance But more of that later trust me, you will understand this point of view, when I start to compare this spirituality with other philosophical understandings such as Satanism Oh yes, you heard me, Satanism but don’t step back just yet, stay till the end before you jump into conclusions and start your judgment You will understand what I’m saying further ahead There are the Aesir, war-like gods, but also concerned with law, justice, poetry, and other activities of a society Gods of the society concerned with maintaining order by all means necessar The gods of mankind and the social activities within the community There are the Vanir, gods concerned with agriculture, the natural world that can be tamed to our own benefit Gods concerned with food in general, hunting, fishing, agriculture, what a society needs to be alive it's not about the survival of a single individual but the preoccupation with the survival of the entire community And of course, gods concerned fertility, love, sex and with magic And then, there are the other gods Now, I'm well aware that in archaeological terms we have no evidences whatsoever of shrines, temples, cults to these gods especially Loki, Hel, Angrboda and so on But this doesn't mean that there weren't people to worship them Temples and cults are imposed by the political order of a society and they dictate what people should do in religious terms Take the case of the god Odin for instance In Scandinavia there was no Odin before the invading Germanic tribes introduced his cult The first to be converted to the new cult of Odin were Kings, nobles, and the people around them in the great urban centres in the centres of power while the people from remote areas maintained their older gods This also happened with Christianity The first to convert to the new faith were the kings and nobles and so on while in the countryside and remote areas people maintained their older gods So just because we don't find archaeological evidences of temples to certain deities, doesn't mean they were not worshipped as well Besides, much of these deities such as Loki, Angrboda, Hel, etc. are still the representation of prehistoric spiritualties which have survived Primitive gods and goddesses that somehow survived in a very orderly world survived in a very civilized perspective of the religious and the spiritual but of course, primitive gods had no place in a civilized world in a world where greater political powers tell you what to worship But somehow, these gods survived characterized as evil beings to diminish their importance which made no sense in the new world but still they survived, and why is that? Because secretly there were still people worshiping the old gods maintaining the old ways Sometimes we speak of paganism as a universal spirituality before Christianity and Christianity being the new faith, and paganism the old ways But just remember, when people were still pagans and Christianity didn't even existed there were older ways, old religions, and old spiritualties before the pagan ones we are so familiar with What we have to understand in Rokkatru, is that the spiritual concept is extended to other fields In our modern society we have the tendency to focus our spiritualties in what seems to be beautiful to us what seems to be a perfect paradise Our collective consciousness was greatly influenced by Christianity and other such religions so it's very hard to let go of that The Norse mythology itself suffered great changes and great influences from Christianity during medieval times and we often find patterns between the Norse and the Christian Asgard became the Christian equivalent of paradise Odin seems a lot like the Christian God Baldr is the Norse god of Light, very similar to Jesus and thus by Christian hands he became the son of Odin, the son of the Alfather, the king of the gods see this pattern here? Baldr wasn't the son of Odin, did you know that? This concept, and many other realities within the Norse mythology, were greatly influenced by Christianity What I'm saying here, is that in our collective consciousness we have a predisposition to follow the same ideas over and over again and in different religions we try to see patterns that perfectly combine with our already familiar perceptions of the spiritual world This is why we have the tendency to completely put aside the underworld in our religions and spiritualties, because the underworld was compared with the infernal realm where souls suffer for eternity a place of darkness and evil and fire In Rokkatru the underworld is also included in the spiritual sphere because it’s part of it it has always been part of it It’s not a place of evil, it’s just another place of the afterlife Listen, as I’ve said, we have the predisposition to focus on what’s familiar, and most people call themselves pagans but unconsciously they still cling to the Christian world-view The Norse pagan reality is much different than the one we read in Norse mythology in the medieval works composed by Christians The Norse afterlife wasn’t as simple as to divide it in two sides – good and evil When you see duality in Norse mythology, you can be sure that is a Christian influence Duality doesn’t fit into a pagan perspective To our Norse ancestors, and other pagan religions of old, the afterlife and everything in our world, our lives, the universe itself, wasn’t simply explained with good and evil There was order and chaos, but Order doesn’t mean it was a good thing and Chaos a bad thing on the contrary The pagan view was much more focused on a balance, on the importance everything has in the process of life, death and rebirth And when speaking of the Norse Afterlife, people seem to focus much more on Valhalla, sometimes Folkvangr both places in Asgard and people have this tendency, focusing on Asgard as the equivalent of paradise and a beautiful place to spend the rest of eternity in the presence of the bright gods and goddesses To our Norse ancestors there were more than 50 possible places in the Afterlife actually, I’m pretty sure it was more than 60 or 70, now that I think about it All according to social differences, religious differences, and the remnants of prehistoric spiritualties So in Rokkatru the underworld, the realm of Hel and other realms, are included in the concept of the afterlife and in the entire spirituality because they are not evil places they are just places of the afterlife where the spiritual self can travel, reside, spend a little time in a sort of vacations and move on to another place In Rokkatru darkness isn't seen as a bad thing or the opposite of light nor the underworld deities as evil deities As I've said, having a dualistic perception of the world is a Christian concept that has infiltrated some modern interpretations of Norse cosmology Chaos isn't evil, in fact, there isn't Order without Chaos For what good was Order if there was nothing else in the cosmos? Nothing would exist without chaos Chaos isn't evil, it is a force of nature, a flow of energy that runs through the universe creating and destroying life Why does fire has such a destructive force? It burns the ground, it destroys everything, but with it, comes new life, because fire and the ashes left behind will fertilise the soil With does death exist? In a non-pagan world-view, death is the end but the pagan concept of death is just another phase of life because there isn't a linear progress of life it doesn’t have a beginning and an end, rather, there is birth, life, death and rebirth and on it goes Death gives way to new life Death is not evil; it is part of life So is rot and decay, and loss, and the passing of all things So is chaos, so is the destructive parts of Nature that we humans find inconvenient, scary, "evil" but they must exist in order to continue the balance The chaos part of nature is also sacred, and our ancestors knew that they worshipped and respected that They respected this flow of energy that is completely impartial and it's concerned with maintaining the balance no matter what And we actually see this even with the god Odin before he was Christianised and with all the other gods for that matter The gods can be both good and cruel they do things to achieve their objective without majoring the consequences because balance needs to be maintained and if that means some things must perish, then it must happen People have the tendency to criticise Loki, naturally, because he comes in the sources as the representation of the Christian consciousness he comes as a trickster, evil but doing both good and harm to the gods, not majoring the consequences In here we can still see the glimpse of a Norse pagan understanding Loki being the representation of the neutral force that is concerned with maintaining balance What seems to be evil or good, it's actually what must be done in order to maintain the balance People only see the evil side in Loki, but what about Odin? How many tales we have of him killing others? being a trickster, shapeshifting and trick others, stealing, murdering even raping, everything he does is for his sole benefit Odin doesn't care who he hurts, how many lives he destroys, as long as he achieves his goals Odin is as cruel as Loki, and all the other gods, because they are representations of the continuous forces of order and chaos working together to maintain balance Most people see Odin as the Alfather the king of the gods Read the stories again, because you are reading them as they were written, in a Christian perspective You are watching the words but you are not seeing Behind these stories you can still see the glimpse of a pagan past, a pagan world-view Who in his right mind accepts a deity who murders, ruins lives and even rapes? Who accepts such a deity as the king of the gods and as the Alfather? You are absorbing the Norse myths in a Christian religious interpretation, with a hierarchical structure To our pagan ancestors, before the Viking Age, before the introduction of the Cult of Odin in the north, there wasn't this hierarchical structure among the gods No god was more important than the other Each god has his own importance So why shouldn’t we worship Loki, Angrboda, Hel, Skadi, Heid, etc.? We are not in medieval times, and most of you who want to be pagans and leave the Christian world-view behind well you should start to work on your pagan world-view rather than continue to follow the same patterns the same collective consciousness of our society built on the very fragile foundations of Christianity We are in the XXI century, our spiritual consciousness is expanding, and that’s a good thing We are leaving behind religions and focus much more on spiritualties We are leaving behind what people tell us to worship and how to worship and we are starting to see for ourselves the true nature of the cosmos the true essence of the natural world The gods often manifest themselves through nature and nature is as cruel as it is beautiful but don’t fantasise about it, don’t create a romantic view of the world There is a darker side, but that doesn’t mean its evil, just like a brighter side, sometimes it isn’t good The Gods are not divided into categories of “good” and “bad” Gods They are all worthy of honour Let me explain that in a better way Yes, now I’m about to make comparisons with Satanism, let me just breathe a little Rokkatru in its spiritual form is focused on a more primitive aspect of the world It’s not just about the gods of the underworld, it’s about all the gods, but seen as a crucial manifestation of balance Of course, while others prefer to focus much more on the Aesir and Vanir in Rokkatru people focus much more on the other gods which are manifestations closer to the chaotic side of the universe Now, chaos doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing and Order a good thing This is when a more philosophical approach is needed to explain things on another perspective Mind that throughout this entire video I’ve been showing you what Rokkatru is in my own perspective Many people who have this sort of spirituality may not agree with me, others will agree with a couple of things and as such, what I’m about to say, a lot of people may not agree In my own perspective, and in philosophical terms, I would compare Rokkatru with Satanism Not worshiping the Devil, the dark side, eating children at breakfast and sacrificing to goats No! Please, you are starting to know me. I do not make videos for little children What I’m saying here is that there are a lot of similarities between Rokkatru and Satanism in philosophical terms Let me explain . . . In a lot of religions, including the Norse pagan one, the material creation of the cosmos is the work of a single powerful deity Yahweh, God, Zeus, Odinn, and so on It is the same view over and over again A Single powerful god, doesn’t matter if other gods exist or not but this single deity is responsible for creation, the shaping of the world, the creation of the human beings But there is another side to the story What if this deity is actually the evil one? This deity is associated with light, the giver of light and life but this light can be a metaphor for a lie and an illusion, something so bright that blinds us The message that this deity spreads is that it is a kind of saviour I’m not just talking about Odin, also Zeus and the Christian God, Yahweh etc This seemingly saviour can be a tyrant in disguise This god enslaves souls, imprisons them, blinds them and feeds them illusions, illusions of light, of salvation, and creation We see this with the Christian god people are bound to his will, like sheep they follow blindly the words of god and he forces people to worship him only we have a variety of accounts of god being cruel, vengeful, forcing people to praise him and no other gods because he is the true god and the one bringing salvation On the other hand you have Lucifer, the morning star, the bringer of light a character who frees himself from god and comes to mortals with knowledge, with words of freedom In Greek mythology we have Zeus, who imposes his own order, makes himself king of the gods, destroys the titans who were there before him the mortals fear Zeus Greek mythology doesn’t [didn't] turn around the love people have for the gods but the fear they have of them especially of Zeus and his wrath if people don’t worship him and the Greeks praised the gods out of fear they even had a temple for the Unknown god which was dedicated to any god out there people might forget to praise, and to avoid the wrath of said god, they worshipped the Unknown god to cover all the praises for all the gods to be in good terms with all the gods and avoid repercussions On the other hand there was Prometheus who created humans without the knowledge of Zeus he tricked him, and Zeus in his wrath took away fire from mortals took away light, warmth, knowledge Prometheus stole that fire again and gave it to mortals, gave them light, knowledge, and freedom Zeus punished him severely Does this remind you of something, or someone? We have Odin in Norse mythology, and the giants lived before him there was creation already, there was creation already, there was chaos, but chaos to the Norse, as well as to the Greeks, wasn’t something bad, it was just something, a state, a force in the universe Odin came, killed the giants, transformed everything and imposed a new order, his order, he made himself King of the Gods Loki on the other hand was so very similar to Prometheus and he too was wrongly judged and tortured So we see a variety of characters here being the powerful deities of creation imposing order over the already existing creation Destroying, killing and punishing those who stray from the path those who give knowledge to mortals and act in disguise against the will of this cosmic powerful entity whose very existence is the law of the universe a law created by the cosmic entity himself and every other being who doesn’t concur with this law, this order, is severely punished In Norse mythology we have ginningagap It’s not just a void, darkness, the everlasting chaos It is a formless eternity with a nature which isn’t bound to the limitations of a universal law Being lawless, without restrictions, it’s something that continues to evolve in freedom, with multiple possibilities It’s from this void that everything originally comes from creation starts here, in chaos, in cosmic freedom From this chaos comes the first creatures and in the case of the Norse mythology comes the ancestor of the gods, Ymir From Ymir is actually said in Vafþrúðnismál that maid and man grew from him It doesn’t say it’s Ymir, but at this point he was the only being around, aside from the cosmic cow Audumbla But it says under his hand grew both woman and man, and he also reproduced a son Ymir is the father of the giants, from him came the first beings before the gods, and also a woman and a man Is this the remnants of an old prehistoric Scandinavian past when there was another entity linked to creation before the cult of Odin was introduced in Scandinavia? perhaps . . . The point is, there was creation from chaos, there were beings around who reproduced and gave birth, created life in this chaotic cosmos Things were evolving in its own way But then, from the same beings, came Odin and his brothers They killed Ymir and from his body parts they created the world and eventually the first humans They have settled a new order, they gave order to chaos, or in other words, they imposed their own order and what for them seemed to be order, it wasn’t so for the others who were there before living in their own ways so obviously the giants started a war with the new gods Odin is seen as the wise-one, the god of the gods, the creator and ruler of all This concept has been misunderstood through time and heavily twisted by monotheistic religions, which ended up creating loads of similarities between Norse mythology and these monotheistic beliefs It’s because of these twisted understandings that Norse mythology became what we know today Old Norse mythology and religion was polytheistic in nature, not at all dualistic There were different rulers in different realms one god wasn’t better or greater than another there wasn’t one single god being a god of all and King of the Gods There are in fact poems that demonstrate that Odin wasn’t in fact the wisest of all There are others as wise and wiser than him Odin himself in the poem Vafþrúðnismál recognizes that the giant Vafþrúðnir to be wiser than him Mimir was also wiser for instance. Odin was excited to meet these giants and have their knowledge This is why I think Rokkatru philosophically is very similar to Satanism, because it tries to focus on another aspect of the tales, another world-view away from the Order which was forced upon us This idea of a cosmic entity forcibly imposing an order and all must follow or die In the case of the Norse mythology, if any other god or any other being didn’t fit into this new order, new rule, under the law of Odin, it was destroyed, or tortured, or tortured and destroyed It’s not about following the wise-one, who deals out justice as it suits him It’s about freeing ourselves, thinking for ourselves, understanding the gods within us and not the imposing ideas of the outside This is why Lucifer, Loki, Prometheus, are the metaphors for spiritual freedom and knowledge because they suffered trying to give us that freedom and knowledge, so we could be free and do things for ourselves and not blindly follow this cosmic law forced on us This is also why Rokkatru focuses much more on the chaotic aspect of nature Because these Christianised gods are the symbol of order, justice, mercy, compassion, fairness but that is an illusion look around you, do you see fairness and mercy and justice in the world, in your life, in the life of anyone? Where exactly is fairness and mercy? There isn’t in the natural world there is no such thing The rat is eaten by the owl, the owl is eaten by the fox, the fox eaten by the wolf and on and on it goes There is no mercy or fairness, there is only a cycle and a balance must be maintained There is birth, life, death and rebirth Nature is beautiful and it seems so perfect but it lacks these things, mercy and fairness and justice and other things Why? Because those are human traits That’s when you realise why on earth we are here. In this world Because what nature lacks, we give Now justice . . . justice is another matter . . . there is no justice, no true justice How do we know we are being just? What if we deal out justice to cover our own fears? The justice we give today may not my just at all to other parties What exactly is being just? When someone murders another, often our justice is to take away freedom, or worse, to execute the *** So a person takes life and our justice is to take life as well? What kind of twisted cycle of justice is that? There are certain things in nature that simply do not exist but we can give it but on the other hand, there is a lot of illusions and as soon as we understand that, we understand how the world works, we accept the changes and we make our own changes we struggle to change things and instead of waiting for the goodness of the gods, we will do things for ourselves, and wait no longer upon certain illusions that do not free our mind and our spirit Understanding and accepting chaos, is to understand the way things are and must be to keep the balance Fewer disappointments and frustrations and more action With this being said, I think you start to realise that the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda , are actually chains that prevent your mind from reaching an higher understanding if you keep reading those sources in a Christian consciousness This is a problem in the spiritual understanding of Norse mythology These great sources, the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, I said this before and I say it again, are works greatly influenced by Christianity and we see Norse mythology and religion in a Christian perspective So it’s time to re-read the poems and the stories and actually see the big differences between what’s Christian and the remnants of the pagan world-view It’s not just about the influences of Christianity upon these works it’s also the influences of that new faith upon people For instance, these works were tempered with by poets who lived off their poetry and performance they recited such poetic works in courts, for kings, nobles, for great families The original sagas and poems and tales were very dark, with a lot of chaos and strange creatures and also black magic with a very pagan essence and understanding of the natural world and the cosmos All of these aspects were purposely taken out, because no one would hire poets to tell such dark horrid stories because people were starting to be Christians, some had already converted or in general people began to share a collective Christian consciousness Poets couldn’t bring the pagan past to the poems they had to make alterations, they had to improvise and add Christian ideas to the works so such works would be accepted This is what happened with Snorri Sturluson, the author of the Prose Edda He was a Christian, and deliberately took out the dark aspects dark in a Christian perspective and even added many Christian aspects to the old sagas So this is what Rokkatru is Most of what I said it’s my own perspective about this spirituality, and I know I said a lot so it’s perfectly normal if you feel a bit confused In conclusion, Rokkatru is a spirituality based on the northern European pagan Traditions and much more focused on the tribal and primitive aspects of Norse mythology All gods are included in this spirituality although there is a great emphasis of the worship of the so called underworld gods, such as Angrboda, Hel, etc but also other gods, for instance, Ullr, a Aesir god but whose essence is very primitive, very much connected to the wilds Rokkatru is a spirituality much more focused on the shamanic work within the pagan frame of northern Europe It’s not just worshipping the gods but trying to reach them in a more personal manner so unlike most of pagan religions and spiritualties, it’s not turned to the community rather to the development of a single individual, which makes Rokkatru a very solitary spirituality I’ve also compared Rokkatru with Satanism as a modern philosophy and not blood rituals and nonsense to scare children There are a lot of similarities with Satanism, because yet again, it’s a spirituality focused on the development of the individual focused on setting our minds free from the belief of a single all-powerful deity which force us to accept its own order So instead of following the usual perspective of an orderly universe, everything is beautiful in Rokkatru people prefer to focus on the other side of all things precisely on what most religions put aside which ends up blinding us from reality We usually put aside the ugly, the inconvenient and what seems to be evil, and then we have created a single collective consciousness that things such as death and destruction are evil aspects of nature We have this tendency to have a very dualistic perspective of the world, where somethings go into the bag of good stuff and the other go into the bag of evil stuff Rokkatru helps to let go of that collective consciousness It helps to let go the illusion that everything is dualistic, everything is a fight between good and evil What we usually don’t like, we don’t like because the society decided it was wrong, but it isn’t, it’s just part of nature Death for instance, it became a taboo, something horrible that we have put aside Yes it is horrible but precisely because of the fact that we have put death aside, we will never truly understand it and we will always be afraid of it, because it’s there, it exists, but we have put it aside, and as such we haven’t given a proper value to death, we haven’t bent our minds to that subject in order to understand it We dear the unknown but if we know death, if we accept it as something that it isn’t personal, it’s just part of nature, we stop fearing it Alright friends thank you so much for watching and I know this is a very long video, almost a documentary but I hope you have enjoyed it so . . . thank you so much for watching see you on the next video and . . . tack för idag! (Thank you for today!)