User talk:Warrensson

I meant to reply to you as, I understood, you were the writer of the article on "Germanic Neo-Paganism".

The very term "Germanic Neo-Paganism" is an anathema to practitioners of the revived Asatru/Forn Sed/Forn Sidr/Heathen movement and that the article is quite off-target. I am a practitioner of Nordic Heathenry of long standing. Calling us "Germanic Neo-Pagans" is disrespectful.

Hello there
I found the text below forming a new page within my own user pages - I'm not sure where you intended it to go but that wasn't the right place! Let me know where you actually wanted it and I'll try to help you get it there! Kim Dent-Brown  (Talk)  10:33, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

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The term "Germanic Neo-paganism" can only have been coined by someone that is not a practitioner, for a number of reasons:

1. Self-identifying Asatruar, I would expect based upon my personal experience over more than 20 years as a practitioner, would be the largest population that could be viewed, by outsiders as being "Germanic Neopagans".

2. The term Germanic understates the spread of the religion as it absolutely includes the Nordic nations, this needs to be either explicit or absolutely implicit and understood to be so by all seeing the term.

3. The term "pagan" is of Latin origin and is therefore inappropriate for those of a Germanic/Nordic faith AND it is from the language of the church that sought to wipe us out c.f. Charlemagne, Olaf Trygvasson. The gross insensitivity of labelling us as any sort of "pagan" demonstrates that the person coining the term is not one of us. We are a faith that champions personal freedoms as much as possible whilst still taking into account the practicalities of everyday life and as such we object to others labelling us according to the terms that they are most familiar with i.e. it is our right to self define ourselves.

4. Those who self-identify as being "neo-pagans"are *not* like us. They are, in my experience woolly minded wishful thinkers and quite opposed to the sharpness, rigour and at times nastyness of Odin.

As a long standing practitioner going back more than two decades now I urge that the term "Germanic Neo-Pagan" be dropped in favour of the term "Heathen" which is sufficiently general to cover all the variants of "Germanic Neo-Paganism".

Warrensson (talk) 09:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)