*laughs in Birther*

Myth take:

If you think something is a dick reference or a dick joke then it most likely is one.

Paganism take:

Newbie questions are good for the health of our movement. The moment we stop welcoming them and start treating such questions with disdain or scorn is the moment we've started cutting off our potential for growth, adaptation, & change.

Myth take:

Nordic myth generally supports doing what we call pragmatism & practicality. That said, it is important to remember those are NOT the same thing as expediency & the expedient thing does, at times, create more problems than it solves.

See Fenrir for one great example.

She IS the leader of the valkyries so that tracks.

Which is further emphasized by the running joke of Loki coming up with increasingly transparent bullshit to explain away why "Freya" is acting a lot like Thor.

Paganism take:

Our eventual inclusion in society as a "legitimate" religion should not come at the expense of what makes us unique, weird, and wonderful.

It also shouldn't come at the price of ceasing to speak truth to power.

Myth take:

Ambiguity is good. Embrace what it teaches instead of puzzling over what is lacking.

Myth take:

It is important to remember that Nordic myth is a product of a poetic tradition that prized riddles, indirect descriptions, & at least three degrees of separation inside references. Taking it literally misses the point.

Myth take:

Nordic myth tends to land on the side of doing whatever you can when you see harm being done over playing it safe. How you do that is, however, very open-ended.

Paganism take:

Please keep getting weird with it.

Every religion is weird in its own way. Trying to downplay that is generally a bigger problem than accepting the strangeness, the earnest, & the cringe.

Myth take:

Nordic myth generally favors fighting to win over fighting fair.

That is also probably because violence is not treated as a first or most ideal solution to most problems.

Myth take:

Odin spends far more time in myth riddling with giants, tricking people, killing bad hosts, & disguising himself as a wandering beggar than he does as some kind of conquering patriarch.

Myth take:

Interpretations of myth are only bad if they encourage genuine harm to others. Someone associating Loki with the color purple or spongecake harms no one while someone saying Odin wants only white people absolutely does.

Paganism take:

Morality is a compass, in that it helps us find out bearings, and not a map, in that it does not dictate precise actions for all scenarios.

Reversing those tends to cause problems.