One thing I didn’t do with Arminius here is that I should have used TDA parts for his shoulders and elbows and attached the Berserker hands to those, but I didn’t have the spare parts laying about. Terminator kits are expensive, yo, and true-scaling of the type I’m experimenting with builds off a Terminator base. There is another style of true-scaling that only uses PA bits, but it requires much more extensive cutting and puttying. I’ll get around to having a go at that eventually, but my puttying skills need sharpening before I do.

“{Sigh} Max, Jotun’s Bane Kindred, and Tyr’s Helm Tribe are but two that hints at the henotheistic nature of the group”

If you’re just tuning in from the æther without knowing me personally, you might misconstrue this comment to mean I am unaware of these two groups. A quick check of my posts from over the last three years on the topic of Heathenry will assure you that I am not unaware of them. I am, in fact, not only aware of them, but friends and friendly with members of each group.

Moving on to address Rod’s comment directly, I was applying a stricter interpretation, or subtype of henotheism. This was an error on my part, me being a little sloppy with the terminology, but I was thinking more along the lines of monolatry than henotheism in general. I will try and correct this in the future to represent that. Rod has also been involved with Heathenry for a much longer time than I have, so has had more of a chance to run into different types and examples of groups than I. I was originally going to use the group he belongs to, Jotun’s Bane Kindred, as an example of a group using a single god in a totemic way while still performing non-exclusive cultic activities, and also in an example of vaettir cultism. I changed my mind about it because I don’t want to name or single out individual Heathens or Heathen groups. Part of this is because some of the things I say may be interpreted as aggressive or controversial, and I am not trying to represent anyone’s opinion other than my own. I don’t want it to be perceived that I am either trading on another groups legitimacy, that I am targeting any specific group for particular criticism, or that I am representing or a part of any specific group in my writing’s here. Another part of it is that I want to focus more on ideas and their logic than extensive examples.

“I think most modern Tribes/Kindreds do Kathenotheism… also often get specific days to focus on them.”

That was all very good stuff, and also taught me a new word, which I am always thankful for. I’ll probably write something in the future that expands on these topics more, but for this post I was aiming more generally to define the idea of these categories of cult and cultism itself. I told Rod something today that I may as well take the time to reiterate here. I’m doing several things at once with these writings, and establishing some definitions and premises is part of that. This is my attempt at a more systematic apologetics for Heathenry, or at least my understanding of Heathenry, rather than a mechanical description of Heathen activity or a more testimonial/confessional style of writing about personal beliefs. There is plenty of these two things already going on, and the mechanical aspect has people at it who are far more equipped to deal with it than I, while the latter is something I’m not really interested in engaging in. Another purpose for this writing is to explore the topic for myself. Thinking by writing, about what I believe, why I believe it, and if I might discover a better reason to believe in it or even something better to believe in. I should probably write all that up in its own posting and put it at the beginning of the TOC on the Ve & Stalli page…

But thank you, Rod, for responding and helping me to think about this a little more for future refinement. “…a spark is kindled by a spark; one man becomes clever by talking with another…”