Tag: Heathenry

A Gate Is Not a Village: What Comes After Declaration 127

Wooden gate opening onto a forest campfire gathering with people and rabbit

Some rabbit trails bring us back to a place we have already visited, but they do not always bring us back for the same reason. Sometimes the old gate is still standing, but something has changed on the other side.

Unplugged Pagan has already spent considerable time with Declaration 127. We have looked at its origins, its relationship to Hávamál 127, its opposition to folkism, its expansion into Declaration 127 2.0, and what its teaching about frith means when the problem is not a stranger outside the hall but someone already sitting near the fire. Those earlier posts asked where the line should be drawn and why silence should not be confused with peace.

This is not another walk through the same history. The rabbit has moved past the sign at the gate and is now looking at what stands behind it. Declaration 127 helped Inclusive Heathens identify what they would no longer tolerate, but a community cannot live forever on a list of things it opposes. Once the gate has been built, someone still has to build the village.

The Gate Was Necessary

The original Declaration 127 appeared in 2016 as a direct response to the Ásatrú Folk Assembly and its exclusionary claims about race, sexuality and gender. Its purpose was narrow but important: the signatories would not promote, associate with or conduct business with the AFA while those policies remained in place. They would not offer the silent approval of frið to people using Heathen traditions to justify prejudice.

That first declaration was a gate. It said that not every ideology using Heathen names, symbols and gods would automatically receive recognition as an equally legitimate form of Heathenry. It rejected the idea that hospitality required giving racial exclusion an honoured seat in the hall.

Declaration 127 2.0 widened that gate in 2021. Instead of concentrating on one named organization, it addressed discrimination more broadly and included age, ability, health, race, ethnicity, ancestry, veteran status, gender, gender identity, sexuality and socioeconomic class. The Declaration of Deeds, which emerged around the same period, added a particularly Heathen answer: the circumstances of birth do not establish a person’s worth. Deeds do.

Those were necessary developments. A village with no gate cannot protect the people inside it. Hospitality without boundaries is not hospitality for long, because eventually the person who wants to control the hall will make everyone else unsafe. The gate matters, and the people who insisted on building it were not wrong.

But a gate is still not a village.

A gate cannot feed the hungry, teach the inexperienced, conduct ritual, preserve memory, care for the grieving or settle a dispute fairly. It can tell us who should not be permitted to poison the well, but it cannot by itself tell us how the well will be maintained, who will carry the water or what happens when the keeper of the well is the person causing harm.

When a Declaration Becomes a Rule

This is where something genuinely new has happened. In January 2026, The Troth adopted formal codes of conduct for its members and leaders. These standards prohibit discrimination, harassment, retaliation, misuse of authority and institutional bullying. They also protect good-faith reporting and begin laying out reporting processes, safeguards against conflicts of interest, due process and avenues of appeal.

One provision deserves particular attention from an Unplugged Pagan perspective: leaders are specifically forbidden from weaponizing frith to pressure harmed people into silence, forced reconciliation or simply “being nice.”

That is a significant step beyond placing a declaration on a website. It recognizes that sacred language can itself be used as a tool of control. Words such as frith, hospitality, kinship, loyalty and community can describe worthy obligations, but they can also be turned against the injured person. A leader can invoke peace while protecting the person who broke it. A community can demand reconciliation before truth has been established. A hall can preserve its reputation by convincing the wounded person that speaking publicly would be the greater betrayal.

Unplugged Pagan has called that false peace. The Troth has now given that problem an organizational name and placed it inside a leadership standard. Frith is not protected by silencing the person who reports harm. Frith was already damaged by the act that made the report necessary.

This is the movement from moral language to accountable structure. A declaration says, “We oppose harm.” A code of conduct asks what happens when harm occurs, who receives the complaint, what protects the complainant from retaliation, how evidence is considered, how conflicts of interest are handled and whether the person making the decision can also be questioned.

That may sound administrative rather than spiritual, but healthy structure is one of the ways a community practices care. When authority is left informal and undefined, authority does not disappear. It simply becomes harder to see, harder to challenge and easier to misuse.

The People Carrying the Declaration

There is another lesson in what happened to Declaration 127 after version 2.0 was released. By the end of 2021, its volunteer committee had burned out and the original website eventually became inaccessible. The declaration survived in archives and through organizations that had signed it, but the structure responsible for maintaining the document, vetting signatories and answering questions largely disappeared.

This was not proof that the declaration had failed. It was proof that good intentions still require sustainable labour. Pagan communities repeatedly build important things on the backs of a few volunteers, celebrate the result and then quietly expect those same people to carry it indefinitely. When those people become exhausted, the disappearance of the work is often treated as a personal failure rather than the predictable result of an unsupported structure.

A village cannot be maintained by praising the firekeeper while leaving that person alone to gather every piece of wood.

In April 2024, responsibility for Declaration 127 and its associated assets was transferred to The Troth. The organization created a Declaration 127 subcommittee within its Community Relations Committee, giving the document a more permanent institutional home. That does not make The Troth the owner of Inclusive Heathenry, nor does it make the organization beyond criticism. It does, however, create identifiable responsibility for preserving the declaration and continuing its development.

In February 2026, The Troth announced an Inclusive Heathen coalition involving The Asatru Community, Fellowship of Fire and Ice, Heathens Against Hate and Urglaawe International. The coalition began working on a new shared position statement addressing the future of Declaration 127. A month later, The Troth reported that a new working draft was nearing release and would be opened to community comment and further revision.

At the time of writing, I have not found that draft publicly available. That means the work should not be treated as finished. The coalition is evidence of movement, not proof of completion. What ultimately matters will be the wording of the new document, the process used to revise it, the way signatories are vetted and what participating organizations are actually expected to do when those principles are violated.

Can Opposition Hold a Community Together?

A new Canadian academic study adds another important question. In his 2026 University of Ottawa thesis, Inclusive Heathenry: The Use of German Pagan Rhetoric in the Construction of a Progressive Contemporary Religion, David Gerald Joseph O’Reilly treats Declaration 127 as a turning point. It helped move Heathenry beyond the older language of “universalism” and toward an Inclusive Heathen identity that actively confronts racism and celebrates racial, sexual and gender diversity.

O’Reilly also raises a difficult criticism. Since 2016, much of Inclusive Heathenry’s energy has been directed toward separating itself from racist or otherwise harmful forms of Heathenry. That separation was necessary, but opposition can become an incomplete foundation. If the loudest shared conversation is always about who must be removed, the community may never develop a sufficiently strong answer to why everyone else should remain.

This does not mean anti-racism has become unnecessary or that the gate should be taken down. A village that forgets why the gate was built will eventually invite the same danger back inside. The question is whether defending the boundary has become the community’s entire identity.

People do not join a religious community only because it has expelled the correct people. They remain because they find ritual, meaning, relationship, obligation, teaching, care, memory and a place where their presence matters. They need more than safety from exclusion. They need belonging.

That distinction is important. Inclusion says that you may enter. Belonging says that your presence changes the shape of the village. Inclusion gives you a seat beside the fire. Belonging means someone notices when you are missing, listens when you speak, values what you contribute and helps carry you when your own strength fails.

What Must Be Built Inside the Gate?

If Declaration 127 marks the boundary, the next stage of Inclusive Heathenry must be measured by what it builds within that boundary. That includes rituals people can share without surrendering the diversity of their individual paths. It includes education grounded in responsible scholarship rather than fantasy history, clergy and community leaders trained to recognize harm, processes that allow complaints without retaliation, and archives that preserve community memory beyond the lifespan of one website or administrator.

It also includes ordinary forms of reciprocity. Visiting the sick. Helping someone through grief. Teaching a newcomer how to make an offering without making them feel foolish. Sharing food. Maintaining sacred places. Supporting people in recovery. Making gatherings accessible. Remembering the volunteers after the event posters come down. Allowing someone to leave without treating departure as betrayal.

None of those things is as dramatic as publishing a declaration. They are also the things that determine whether the declaration means anything.

The Declaration of Deeds gave us the simplest version of this lesson: we are known by what we do. An organization may describe itself as inclusive, but the word must eventually be visible in budgets, policies, accessibility, leadership choices, disciplinary processes, rituals and daily relationships. Otherwise, “inclusive” becomes another decorative label placed over the door.

The same is true of frith. If frith exists only when nobody complains, it is not frith. If hospitality exists only for people who never challenge authority, it is not hospitality. If belonging lasts only while a person remains useful, agreeable and silent, it is not belonging.

The Work After the Declaration

Our earlier UP posts concluded that declarations are not wards. They do not banish harm through correct wording, and they do not replace the courage required to act when the problem arrives at the hearth. The developments of 2026 do not invalidate that conclusion. They show what must come next.

The conduct codes give the boundary practical form. The coalition distributes some of the responsibility across multiple organizations. The proposed revision opens the possibility of community participation. The new scholarship asks whether Inclusive Heathenry can build a religious culture strong enough to offer more than opposition.

None of this guarantees success. Policies can be ignored. Committees can become closed circles. Reporting systems can protect institutions instead of people. Coalitions can produce statements nobody enforces. A beautiful village plan can remain rolled up on a table while the roof continues to leak.

Still, there is something important in recognizing that the gate was never supposed to be the finished work. Declaration 127 was a necessary refusal. It said that racial exclusion, white supremacy and other forms of dehumanizing discrimination would not be granted silence in the name of peace. The task now is to build a community in which that refusal is expressed through protection, accountability, shared practice and meaningful belonging.

A gate tells us where the village begins. Deeds tell us whether a village actually exists.

The rabbit has passed beneath the sign and found plans spread across a table under the trees. The walls are not complete, the new declaration has not yet arrived, and some of the old work still needs repair. But the question is finally moving in the right direction. It is no longer only, “What are we standing against?” It is becoming, “What are we responsible for building together?”

There goes the rabbit again. Godspeed.

Sources and Further Reading

The Rabbit Finds the Heathen Underground

Rabbit sitting beneath enormous tree roots in a forest with a distant campfire

Sometimes the rabbit does not lead us farther into the forest. Sometimes it finds a hole beneath the roots and asks us to look at what has been growing underground all along.

This particular rabbit began with a simple question: What is The Heathen Underground, and does it exist anywhere beyond Facebook?

At first glance, the answer appears straightforward. The Heathen Underground is a large Facebook presence devoted to Heathen beliefs, history and practice. It has a public Facebook Page followed by nearly forty-eight thousand people, along with a separate discussion space called The Heathen Underground Community.

The Page is the publication. The group is the gathering place.

But rabbits are rarely satisfied with the first answer.

Two Doors Bearing the Same Name

The public Page operates less like a congregation and more like a Heathen newspaper, library and community bulletin board rolled together. It shares archaeology, anthropology, folklore, medieval history, books, art, music, ritual practices and discussions about what Heathenry means in the modern world. Some of the material is original, but much of it is carefully selected from researchers, historians, artists and other Heathen or Pagan creators.

The accompanying Community group is where people are invited to discuss those subjects with one another. One door distributes information; the other invites conversation.

The name “underground” may suggest secrecy, but very little about the project is hidden. Its positions are public, its administrators sign their posts, and its community standards are unusually direct. The Heathen Underground describes itself as inclusive, states that marginalized people are active and valued members of the community, and warns that discrimination will result in removal.

It is also openly opposed to folkish Heathenry, racial gatekeeping, white nationalism and attempts to use Germanic religion as a vehicle for far-right politics. The Page is listed among the online supporters of Declaration 127, the Heathen declaration opposing the normalization of racism and white supremacy within Heathen spaces.

This means The Heathen Underground is not pretending to be politically neutral. Its administrators appear to believe that deciding who may stand around the community fire is itself a religious and ethical question. The gods, the ancestors and the old stories may be central, but so is the treatment of the living person standing beside you.

The Roots Beneath the Page

The project has also changed hands over time.

The available public record identifies Heather O’Brien as its founder. In late summer 2017, when the original Page was apparently in danger of being deleted, responsibility for it was passed to Nicole Butler. More recent posts identify Nicole, Æsc and Sophia as the people tending it.

That history matters. Online communities often look permanent because the name and profile picture remain the same. Behind the screen, however, stewardship changes. Founders leave. New caretakers arrive. Editorial priorities evolve. A Page can retain its name while becoming a different expression of the community that inherited it.

That does not necessarily make the later version false or illegitimate. It makes the Page a living tradition rather than a frozen artifact.

There is an interesting parallel here with Pagan land and Pagan gatherings. A place may keep its old name while the people maintaining it change. A festival may continue while its purpose gradually shifts. A community may speak of continuity even though the hands carrying the work are no longer the hands that began it.

The name survives, but the meaning is continually being renewed by whoever holds responsibility for it.

The Trail Returns to Raven’s Knoll

Then the rabbit crossed a trail we have followed before.

A 2023 academic article in Nova Religio, “Inclusive Heathens Practice Ancestor Veneration, But Not Pride in Ancestry,” identifies Nicole Butler as the host of The Heathen Underground and as a gythia active within the Heathen community of Raven’s Knoll. Æsc Adams is also identified in related research as her partner and cohost.

That places The Heathen Underground within a recognizable Ontario Heathen network involving religious practice, online education, community gatherings and Raven’s Knoll.

This is where we have to resist turning an ordinary network into an extraordinary theory.

Shared people, places and projects do not prove common ownership, hidden control or secret coordination. Small religious communities naturally develop overlapping networks. The same person may help organize a ritual, administer a Facebook group, contribute to a gathering, write a book and sit for an academic interview. That is not evidence of a conspiracy. It is often simply what community labour looks like when the community is small and the number of people willing to perform that labour is smaller still.

What the connection does show is that The Heathen Underground is not merely an anonymous content farm passing around Viking pictures. It is connected to people engaged in lived Heathen practice and to one of the better-documented Heathen environments in Canada.

For those who know the history of Raven’s Knoll, this should not be surprising. The land has long been a meeting point where different paths overlap: Pagan, Heathen, Druidic, polytheist, festival, academic and increasingly nonreligious. People arrive through different gates, but many of their paths eventually cross beneath the same trees.

Who Keeps the Memory?

This is where the rabbit became more interesting.

The Heathen Underground is not simply sharing information. It is helping decide what contemporary Heathens encounter, what stories remain visible, which sources are treated as credible and what behaviour is publicly rejected. When it shares an archaeological discovery, it contributes to religious education. When it promotes a book, it helps determine which voices are heard. When it denounces racism or abuse, it helps establish the boundaries of acceptable community conduct.

That makes it part of Heathen memory.

Not the whole memory. Not an unquestionable memory. But one of the places where memory is collected, sorted and passed forward.

We often imagine community memory as stories told beside a fire. Today, some of those fires are digital. The storytellers are Page administrators, the audience is counted in followers, and the circle is governed partly by an algorithm belonging to a corporation with no particular obligation to Heathenry, Paganism or the preservation of either.

That creates an uncomfortable question. What happens when a substantial portion of a religious community’s public memory lives on a platform that can change its rules, hide old material or delete the entire archive?

The Heathen Underground has a confirmed account on X under the name @OriginalHU, although its publicly indexed activity appears old. There is also a small YouTube channel bearing the same name, but I could not conclusively establish that it belongs to the same administrators. A 2017 book by Æsc Adams was published through Hart’s Horn Press, described by its Amazon listing as a subsidiary of The Heathen Underground.

Beyond those tracks, there does not appear to be an active independent website, public archive or substantial presence on newer social platforms. Facebook is not simply one branch of The Heathen Underground. Facebook is effectively where The Heathen Underground lives.

Its influence beyond Facebook is visible mainly through other people referring back to it. The Longship recommends it as a Heathen resource. The Wild Hunt reported on its role in publicly confronting racist and threatening behaviour in 2021. Academic researchers have interviewed its hosts and treated the Page as a recognizable part of modern inclusive Heathenry.

Its roots extend beyond Facebook, but its trunk remains planted firmly inside it.

What the Rabbit Found

The rabbit did not uncover a secret organization beneath the forest floor. It found something both simpler and more important: roots.

The Heathen Underground is a public-facing expression of an interconnected Heathen community. It is part educational resource, part editorial platform, part political boundary marker and part community gathering place. Its history reaches from its original American founder to later Canadian stewardship, and from an online Page into the lived Heathen landscape surrounding Raven’s Knoll.

That does not mean every person at Raven’s Knoll speaks through it. It does not mean every inclusive Heathen agrees with it. It does not make the Page the official voice of Canadian Heathenry. It means only that it has become one of the more visible places where certain strands of modern Heathen identity, scholarship, politics and community memory meet.

Perhaps that is what an underground really is.

Not a hidden room where plans are made, but the unseen network beneath the forest: roots touching roots, carrying nourishment, memory and warning from one part of the community to another.

The Page is what we see above the soil. The relationships are what keep it alive beneath.

There goes the rabbit again. Godspeed.

A note on scope: This post follows publicly available sources and documented relationships. Shared people, venues, terminology or projects demonstrate connection, but they do not by themselves establish common ownership, control, wrongdoing or secret coordination.

Declaration 127, Hávamál 127, and the Actual Hearth

Inclusive Heathen ritual emphasizing frith and integrity

There is a danger in letting institutions do all of our thinking for us.

That is not a knock against institutions. Sometimes they are needed. Sometimes they hold the line when loose communities cannot. Sometimes they preserve documents, organize clergy, publish resources, and provide a public answer when the wider world asks, “Where do you stand?”

In modern Heathenry, The Troth is one of those institutions.

It gives an organizational example of inclusive Heathenry. It stands against folkism, racialism, and the use of Germanic religion as a costume for white supremacy. It now also carries formal stewardship of Declaration 127, one of the most important anti-folkish statements in modern Heathen history.

That matters.

But Unplugged Pagan is not The Troth.

Unplugged Pagan is not a clergy program, a committee, a declaration archive, or an institutional hall with bylaws and officers. It is something rougher than that. It is more like a fire at the edge of the woods, where the questions are less polished but sometimes more honest.

So the question for this place is not simply, “What does The Troth say?”

The better question is this:

What does Declaration 127 mean at the actual hearth?

The Line Between Institution and Hearth

The bigger conclusion, at least for Unplugged Pagan, is this:

The Troth gives an organizational example.

Declaration 127 gives the public boundary.

Hávamál 127 gives the old poetic command.

Unplugged Pagan asks what that means at the actual hearth.

That is the angle that matters here.

Not “The Troth says this, therefore we obey.”

That would be too institutional and too neat.

Unplugged Pagan has always been more interested in the place where the clean statement meets the dirty ground. The fire pit. The broken friendship. The old gift-bond. The kinship that failed. The boundary that had to be drawn. The guest who became a threat to the hall. The moment when keeping peace becomes complicity.

That is where Hávamál 127 stops being a quotation and becomes a test.

What Declaration 127 Is

Declaration 127 first appeared in 2016 through Huginn’s Heathen Hof. It was written as a response to the Ásatrú Folk Assembly and the wider problem of folkish rhetoric in Heathenry.

The AFA has been widely criticized because of its folkish and racialized approach to Ásatrú. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes it as a neo-Völkisch hate group, and the Anti-Defamation League describes it as a modern Norse Pagan group with a white supremacist slant.

That is the problem Declaration 127 tried to answer.

Not ancestry itself.

Not remembering the dead.

Not honouring one’s roots.

The problem is when ancestry gets turned into ownership. When roots become border fences. When honouring the ancestors becomes an excuse to lock sincere seekers out of the hall because of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, ability, family structure, or bloodline.

That is folkism’s poison.

It takes something sacred and turns it into a gate.

Hávamál 127

Declaration 127 takes its name from stanza 127 of the Hávamál, commonly rendered in this form:

“When you see misdeeds, speak out against them, and give your enemies no frith.”

That line has teeth.

It does not say, “When you see misdeeds, quietly hope the situation improves.”

It does not say, “When you see misdeeds, avoid conflict so everyone stays comfortable.”

It does not say, “When you see misdeeds, keep inviting the poisoner back to the well because hospitality is sacred.”

It says to speak.

It says to name the wrong.

It says not to give frith to enemies.

That is a hard teaching, especially in Pagan spaces where many people are allergic to direct conflict. We often prefer circles, soft language, consensus, healing words, and the illusion that everyone can be included if we just stretch the tent wide enough.

But no tent can remain standing if you invite people in who are cutting the ropes.

Frith Is Not Blind Peace

Frith is often spoken of as peace, safety, right relationship, and the bonds that hold a community together.

That makes it sacred.

But sacred does not mean unlimited.

Frith is not blind peace.

Frith is not conflict avoidance.

Frith is not letting someone remain at the hearth while they deny the humanity, dignity, or belonging of others who sit there.

That is where “no frith with folkism” becomes more than a slogan.

If folkism says only certain blood belongs, then folkism has already broken frith.

If folkism says the gods are racial property, then folkism has already broken frith.

If folkism uses sacred symbols to shelter white supremacy, then folkism has already broken frith.

Refusing it a seat is not the first act of hostility.

It is the recognition that hostility was already brought through the door.

The Actual Hearth

The actual hearth is where this becomes personal.

It is easy to sign a declaration online.

It is harder to live one when the person crossing the line is someone you know.

It is harder when they once shared your fire.

It is harder when they gave you gifts.

It is harder when there is history, memory, laughter, old ritual, old loyalty, or old kinship tangled around the problem.

But that is exactly where Hávamál 127 matters most.

The real test is not whether we can denounce a stranger with a bad logo.

The real test is whether we can name misdeeds when they happen close enough to cost us something.

Unplugged Pagan has circled this fire before. Gift-bonds. Betrayal. Frith. Kinship. Hospitality. Land. Roots. The painful knowledge that some bonds die, and when they die, pretending they still live becomes its own kind of lie.

That is why this subject fits here.

Because Declaration 127 is not only about public statements and organization lists. It is about the moment when a person has to decide whether peace is still peace, or whether peace has become silence.

Remembering Roots Is Not Worshipping Blood

There is also a difference between remembering roots and worshipping blood.

That distinction matters deeply to me.

I can honour where I come from.

I can honour my ancestors.

I can honour the old stories, the land, the dead, the language fragments, the hearth practices, the gods, the spirits, the old roads, and the strange pull that brings a person back toward Pagan soil.

But ancestry is not a weapon.

Ancestry is not a deed to the gods.

Ancestry is not a lock on the hall door.

Ancestry may explain part of the road that brought me here.

It does not give me permission to lock the road behind me.

That is the sentence I keep coming back to.

Because folkism takes the memory of roots and turns it into blood worship. It takes the dead and makes them border guards. It takes heritage and turns it into spiritual property law.

I cannot accept that.

Not as Paganism.

Not as Heathenry.

Not as honour.

The Troth, Declaration 127, and Unplugged Pagan

The Troth matters here because it gives one institutional example of a different road.

It says Heathenry does not have to be folkish.

Declaration 127 matters because it gives a public boundary.

It says discriminatory organizations and exclusionary ideologies do not represent the wider Heathen community.

Hávamál 127 matters because it gives the old poetic command.

It says that when we see misdeeds, we speak against them, and we do not give enemies frith.

But Unplugged Pagan’s work is smaller and closer to the ground.

It asks what that means in the actual living of it.

What does it mean when the person at the hearth is the one poisoning the well?

What does it mean when hospitality becomes a shield for harm?

What does it mean when kinship is used to demand silence?

What does it mean when “keeping the peace” only protects the person breaking it?

Those are not institutional questions.

Those are firekeeper questions.

The Firekeeper’s Answer

A firekeeper does not only feed the flame.

A firekeeper also watches what comes near it.

Too little fuel and the fire dies.

Too much fuel and the fire becomes dangerous.

The wrong thing thrown into it can poison the air.

That is how I understand this issue.

Hospitality is sacred, yes.

But so is protection.

Kinship is sacred, yes.

But so is truth.

Ancestry is sacred, yes.

But so are deeds.

Frith is sacred, yes.

But frith cannot be built with those who deny frith to others.

That is the line at the hearth.

Not hatred.

Not purity.

Not moral performance.

A boundary.

A necessary one.

Closing Thought

The Troth can hold the archive.

Declaration 127 can mark the public boundary.

Hávamál 127 can give the old command.

But each hearth still has to decide what it will allow beside the fire.

For Unplugged Pagan, the answer is simple enough:

Remember your roots.

Honour your dead.

Keep the fire.

Welcome the sincere traveller.

But do not confuse hospitality with surrender.

Do not confuse ancestry with ownership.

Do not confuse silence with peace.

And do not give frith to those who would use the sacred to deny it to others.

The fire is lit.

The road is open.

But folkism does not get a seat by the hearth.

Sources and Further Reading

The Troth, Declaration 127, and the Line at the Hearth

Group of people socializing outdoors around a banner reading 'Open Hall, Many Roots Inclusive Heathenry All Are Welcome'

Every so often in modern Heathenry, a name comes up that is bigger than the name itself.

The Troth is one of those names.

On the surface, The Troth is an organization. It has memberships, officers, clergy training, educational programs, policies, publications, committees, and all the ordinary machinery that comes with a long-running religious body. But beneath that administrative layer is something more important: The Troth is one of the major inclusive Heathen organizations that has tried to stand against folkism, racialism, and the use of Germanic religion as cover for white supremacy.

That matters because modern Heathenry has never been free from that fight.

The gods, myths, runes, symbols, ancestors, sagas, and old Germanic language have been repeatedly grabbed by people who want to turn a spiritual path into bloodline politics. The result is a constant argument over who gets to define Heathenry: those who see it as a living religious path open to sincere seekers, or those who want to turn it into a racial gate.

The Troth stands on the inclusive side of that argument.

According to its own organizational statement, The Troth is open to people who seek to know and worship the gods, honour the ancestors, and live by Germanic Heathen values, regardless of tradition, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, gender, or family structure. It also states plainly that it stands against the use of Germanic religion or symbols to advance racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, or white supremacy.

That is not vague language.

That is a line.

What Is The Troth?

The Troth began as The Ring of Troth, founded in 1987 by Edred Thorsson, also known as Stephen Flowers, and James Chisholm. Its early history has baggage, as nearly all modern Pagan institutions do. There were occult influences, personality conflicts, internal controversies, and leadership struggles. No serious reading of modern Heathen history should pretend otherwise.

But The Troth also became known as one of the major non-racialist, inclusive Heathen organizations. That distinction is important. It was not built as a folkish gatekeeping body. It was built around education, publication, community, religious training, and the idea that Heathenry could be practiced without racial exclusion.

The Troth currently describes its mission as building and supporting a diverse, inclusive spiritual community that provides education, clergy training, pastoral care, and publications for the many faiths within Heathenry. Its current values are listed as Integrity, Hospitality, Courage, Reverence, and Sustainability.

Those values are worth looking at carefully.

The Troth defines courage as anti-racism, active resistance to white supremacy, and confronting injustice and bigotry. That is a long way from the watered-down “honour, courage, loyalty” boilerplate that gets passed around in some Heathen spaces as if it were ancient law carved into a stone somewhere.

It is not.

Modern Heathenry is full of reconstruction, interpretation, invention, recovery, and correction. The honest practitioner needs to admit that. We are not walking out of an untouched Iron Age temple. We are rebuilding from fragments: poems, sagas, archaeology, folklore, comparative religion, devotional experience, and modern community work.

That means the question is not whether an organization is modern.

They all are.

The better question is this: what kind of modern thing is it trying to build?

The Problem Declaration 127 Tried to Answer

To understand why The Troth matters, we have to talk about Declaration 127.

Declaration 127 first appeared in 2016 through Huginn’s Heathen Hof. It was written as a response to escalating folkish rhetoric and, more specifically, to the Ásatrú Folk Assembly, commonly shortened to AFA.

The AFA is a folkish Heathen organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes it as a neo-Völkisch hate group and states that its members subscribe to the belief that pre-Christian Norse and Germanic religions can only properly be practiced by people with Northern European ancestral roots, especially white people.

That is the core problem.

Folkism tries to turn ancestry into spiritual ownership. It takes the honouring of ancestors, which can be meaningful and sacred, and twists it into a locked gate. It says, in effect, that blood decides belonging.

Declaration 127 said no.

The name comes from Hávamál stanza 127, often rendered in English along these lines:

“When you see misdeeds, speak out against them, and give your enemies no frið.”

That line is the spine of the matter.

Frith is often discussed as peace, safety, social harmony, sacred order, and the bonds that hold a community together. But Declaration 127 forces a harder question: is frith owed to those who are actively poisoning the well?

That is not a small question.

Modern Pagan spaces often love the language of tolerance. Everyone gets a seat. Everyone gets a voice. Everyone gets to speak their truth. That sounds noble right up until someone uses that openness to normalize exclusion, bigotry, and racial gatekeeping.

At that point, unlimited tolerance becomes cowardice dressed as hospitality.

Declaration 127 was important because it said, publicly and collectively, that Heathen groups should not maintain silence simply to keep peace with those who use the gods, ancestors, and traditions to justify prejudice.

The Original Declaration: A Necessary First Line

The original Declaration 127 was powerful because it gave inclusive Heathens a shared public statement. It allowed kindreds, groups, and organizations to say: we do not stand with the AFA; we do not accept racial exclusion as Heathenry; we do not grant folkism the cover of religious diversity.

That may sound obvious now, but at the time it was not always treated as obvious.

According to The Troth’s own later summary, before Declaration 127 there had been a habit in some Heathen spaces of tolerating white nationalists and folkish actors as if their presence were simply an unpleasant cost of growing the religion. The hope seemed to be that if inclusive Heathens offered enough hospitality, the folkish element might eventually soften.

That did not happen.

Because folkism does not enter the hall looking for hospitality. It enters looking for legitimacy.

That is the real lesson.

If a group built on exclusion is allowed to sit beside everyone else as merely “another kind of Heathenry,” then the wider public sees two equal options: inclusive Heathenry and racialized Heathenry. That is exactly the trap. It makes white supremacy look like a valid theological position instead of a corruption of the sacred.

The original Declaration 127 disrupted that.

It was not perfect. It was not complete. It was not a magic spell. But it gave people language. It gave people a public marker. It gave people a way to say, “No, that does not represent us.”

Sometimes the first act of rebuilding a community is not writing a complete constitution.

Sometimes it is simply pointing at the fire and saying, “That does not belong in the hall.”

The Criticism: Did Declaration 127 Go Far Enough?

Declaration 127 also drew criticism from inclusive Heathens who supported its general purpose but believed it did not go far enough.

A 2019 article in The Wild Hunt summarized one of the key concerns: because the original Declaration focused heavily on the AFA, some felt it weakened the broader statement that needed to be made. The real issue was not only one organization. The issue was folkism, racial exclusion, and opposition to inclusivity across Heathen spaces.

That criticism is fair.

There is a danger in making one group the entire target. If one organization is named as the problem, then others can dodge the issue by saying, “We are not them.” But the rot can exist under different names, different logos, and different tones of voice.

A person does not have to wear an AFA patch to carry folkish ideas.

A kindred does not have to use open slurs to create an exclusionary space.

A group does not have to shout “white supremacy” to quietly build its membership around blood, ancestry, ethnicity, gender conformity, and suspicion of outsiders.

That is why Declaration 127 had to evolve.

Declaration 127 2.0 and Declaration of Deeds

By 2021, Declaration 127 2.0 had emerged as a broader non-discrimination statement. The Troth explains the difference this way: the original Declaration gave people something to stand against, while Declaration 127 2.0 set a broader standard of conduct for people and organizations to follow.

That distinction matters.

Standing against something is necessary. But eventually, a community has to say what it stands for.

“We are not folkish” is a beginning.

It is not the whole path.

Around the same period, another statement called the Declaration of Deeds was also written and circulated. It framed the matter through a simple but deeply Heathen idea: we are our deeds. We are not made worthy or unworthy by the circumstances of birth. We are judged by what we do.

That may be one of the cleanest anti-folkish arguments available.

Folkism says blood matters most.

Declaration of Deeds says deeds matter most.

That is a direct collision of worldviews.

The Troth signed both Declaration 127 2.0 and the Declaration of Deeds in 2022. In its announcement, The Troth stated that simply saying “we will not associate with white nationalists” was not enough, because Heathens also had to declare what they were for.

That is the mature stage of the argument.

Not just “no frith with folkism,” but also: what kind of frith are we building instead?

The Collapse and Stewardship of Declaration 127

Declaration 127 did not remain stable forever.

According to The Troth’s current Declaration 127 page, after Declaration 127 2.0 was approved and released during the COVID-19 pandemic period, the structure around it began to unravel. By the end of 2021, the committee had burned out and the website had gone down. The statement still existed, but its home, signatory process, and active stewardship had weakened.

That is not surprising.

Volunteer-driven Pagan work burns people out. That is not an insult. It is a reality. People build something important, hold it together with unpaid labour, fight the same fights repeatedly, get attacked from multiple sides, and eventually run out of fuel.

Movements often fail not because the idea was wrong, but because the people carrying it were exhausted.

In April 2024, Rob Schreiwer turned over stewardship and ownership of Declaration 127 and its associated assets to The Troth at Frith Forge. The Troth then became the official steward of Declaration 127, with the stated goal of preserving it, updating it, and forming committees to vet signatories and guide its future.

That is where The Troth becomes more than just another signatory.

It becomes part of the infrastructure carrying Declaration 127 forward.

That does not mean The Troth owns inclusive Heathenry.

It does not mean The Troth speaks for every Heathen.

It does not mean The Troth is beyond criticism.

But it does mean that The Troth has taken formal responsibility for one of the major anti-folkish documents in modern Heathen history.

Did Declaration 127 Defeat Folkism?

No.

And it is important to say that plainly.

Declaration 127 did not destroy folkism. It did not erase white nationalism. It did not stop bad actors from using runes, gods, ancestors, and Germanic symbols for racial politics.

The Troth itself admits this. Its Declaration 127 page notes that folkish Paganism and white nationalism surged during the rise of the far right between 2015 and 2021, and that less than a year after Declaration 127 was written, Charlottesville happened.

That should sober everyone up.

Declarations are not wards.

They are not spells.

They are not substitutes for action.

A declaration is a line written down. Its worth depends on whether anyone is willing to stand on that line when pressure comes.

This is where modern Pagan communities often fail. We write beautiful statements. We share them. We pin them. We put them in bylaws. Then, when conflict arrives, we suddenly rediscover our fear of confrontation.

But Hávamál 127 is not passive.

It does not say, “When you see misdeeds, quietly hope things improve.”

It does not say, “When you see misdeeds, maintain neutrality so everyone feels welcome.”

It says to speak out against wrong and give no frith to enemies.

That is a hard teaching.

Hard teachings are usually the ones communities need most.

The Troth as the Inn

The Troth uses a useful image for itself: the inn on the roadside of Heathenry.

I like that image.

Not a throne.

Not a fortress.

Not a blood gate.

An inn.

An inn offers hospitality. An inn has a hearth. An inn gives travellers a place to rest, learn, eat, speak, and continue on their road. Not everyone who comes to the inn stays forever. Some people warm their hands by the fire and move on. Some become regulars. Some become innkeepers.

But an inn also has a door.

That is the part people forget.

Hospitality does not mean surrendering the house to those who would burn it down.

Frith does not mean smiling politely while someone poisons the well.

Inclusivity does not mean including exclusion.

The innkeeper has a duty to guests, yes. But the innkeeper also has a duty to the hearth, the house, and everyone already sheltering inside.

That is why “no frith with folkism” is not a contradiction of hospitality. It is a defence of hospitality.

You cannot build a welcoming hall while giving honoured seats to those who want some of the guests removed by blood, race, sexuality, gender, ancestry, or ability.

At that point, the issue is no longer politeness.

It is protection.

The Nine Noble Virtues Problem

This also matters when we talk about the Nine Noble Virtues.

Many people encounter Heathenry through simplified virtue lists: courage, truth, honour, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, self-reliance, industriousness, perseverance. These are often presented as if they are ancient Heathen doctrine.

They are not.

They are modern constructions.

That does not automatically make every word on the list worthless. Hospitality, courage, truth, and perseverance can all be good things. But the problem is not whether a virtue sounds nice. The problem is who framed it, why they framed it, and what kind of community it trains people to accept.

A virtue list can become a mask.

“Honour” can become obedience.

“Loyalty” can become silence.

“Discipline” can become authoritarianism.

“Folk” can become race.

That is why The Troth’s current values are worth noting. It does not center the Nine Noble Virtues as its defining ethical framework. Instead, it names integrity, hospitality, courage, reverence, and sustainability, and it defines courage in terms of anti-racism and active resistance to white supremacy.

That is not accidental.

That is a corrective.

No Frith with Folkism

The phrase “no frith with folkism” works because it goes straight to the heart of the issue.

Folkism wants the benefits of Heathen language without the obligations of Heathen ethics.

It wants ancestry without humility.

It wants tradition without hospitality.

It wants gods without accountability.

It wants symbols without responsibility.

It wants frith while denying frith to others.

That cannot stand.

Frith is not a decorative word. It is not a warm fuzzy feeling. It is a bond of peace, trust, and right relationship. If someone’s ideology is built on excluding sincere seekers because of race, gender, sexuality, ancestry, or ability, then that person has already broken frith.

Refusing them a seat at the hearth is not the first act of hostility.

It is the recognition that hostility was already brought in with them.

The Useful Lesson of The Troth

The Troth is not perfect.

No institution is.

Its history has conflict. Its founders were human. Its leadership has changed. Its roof has leaked. Its hearth has burned low at times. There are people who will criticize it from inside and outside Heathenry, and some of those criticisms may be worth hearing.

But perfection is not the test.

The better test is this:

When the line had to be drawn, where did the organization stand?

On the question of folkism, racial exclusion, and white supremacy in Heathenry, The Troth has placed itself on the inclusive side of the line. Its current mission, values, Declaration 127 stewardship, and signing of Declaration 127 2.0 and the Declaration of Deeds all point in that direction.

That does not make The Troth the final authority on Heathenry.

It does not make membership mandatory.

It does not mean everyone must agree with its structure, leadership, theology, or institutional choices.

But it does make The Troth a useful landmark.

When someone claims Heathenry must be folkish, The Troth proves otherwise.

When someone claims the gods belong only to bloodlines, Declaration 127 answers otherwise.

When someone claims peace requires tolerating white supremacy, Hávamál 127 answers otherwise.

When someone asks whether there can be frith with folkism, the answer should be plain.

No.

Not at this hearth.

Closing Thought

Modern Heathenry is not ancient Heathenry resurrected whole.

It is a reconstruction. A rebuilding. A difficult act of memory, scholarship, devotion, community, and correction.

That means we have choices to make.

We can rebuild the hall as a blood gate.

Or we can rebuild it as a hearth.

We can use ancestry as a weapon.

Or we can honour ancestors without turning them into border guards.

We can mistake silence for peace.

Or we can remember that sometimes peace is protected by speaking plainly against what would destroy it.

The Troth, at its best, is the inn on the roadside.

Declaration 127 is the sign by the door.

The fire is lit.

But folkism does not get a seat by the hearth.

Sources and Further Reading

No Frith with Folkism Means Reckoning with the Nine Noble Virtues

A vintage scale balancing symbols of reciprocity on one side and responsibility on the other

After reading The Wild Hunt’s recent opinion piece, “No Frith with Folkism,” I found myself agreeing with the surface statement while still feeling that something deeper needed to be said.

Yes, Folkism has no rightful place in Heathenry.

Yes, racism, white supremacy, blood-gatekeeping, and ancestry-as-spiritual-ownership need to be rejected.

But that led me to the harder question:

What happens when parts of modern Heathenry were built, shaped, repeated, or popularized inside the same ideological weather system that inclusive Heathens now say they reject?

That question brought me back to the Nine Noble Virtues.

The Nine Noble Virtues are often presented as if they are ancient Heathen ethics. They are not. They are a modern construction. The Wild Hunt has previously reported that the Nine Noble Virtues were created by John Yeowell and John Gibbs-Bailey of the Odinic Rite in 1974, and that Yeowell had ties to white supremacist and fascist movements. The Troth also states plainly that the Nine Noble Virtues are neither authentically from the Viking Age nor really ethics in the ancient sense, and that they were originally developed by the Odinic Rite.

That matters.

Not because courage is racist.

Not because truth is racist.

Not because honour, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, self-reliance, industriousness, or perseverance are bad words.

But because the package matters. The origin matters. The framework matters. The assumptions matter.

Modern Heathenry, especially in North America, has had to wrestle for years with white supremacist appropriation of its symbols and language. The Wild Hunt itself has reported Heathen voices saying that the tie between white supremacy and Heathenry in America goes back to the beginning of organized modern movements, and that modern Heathens have had to keep fighting the misuse of their symbols by extremists.

So I submitted an opinion piece to The Wild Hunt for consideration.

Partly because I think the question deserves to be asked.

Partly because “no frith with Folkism” cannot stop at rejecting obvious racism. It also has to examine inherited structures, moral frameworks, beginner materials, and community assumptions that may have been normalized through Folkish or far-right-adjacent spaces.

And partly, yes, to see whether this kind of internal critique will be given room.

It is one thing to say “we reject Folkism” when the target is safely outside the door.

It is harder to ask whether the floorboards inside the hall were cut from the same forest.

We shall see.

Below is the opinion piece submitted to The Wild Hunt for consideration.

No Frith with Folkism Means Reckoning with the Nine Noble Virtues

By Kevin McLaughlin
writing as Lugh Sulian

The recent Wild Hunt opinion piece “No Frith with Folkism” says something that needed saying clearly: Folkism has no rightful place in Heathenry.

I agree.

But I also think the statement opens a harder and more uncomfortable question. If there is no frith with Folkism, then what do we do with the parts of modern Heathenry that were shaped inside the same ideological weather system?

The Nine Noble Virtues are the obvious example.

Courage. Truth. Honour. Fidelity. Discipline. Hospitality. Self-reliance. Industriousness. Perseverance.

To many modern Heathens, these are treated almost like a sacred ethical foundation. They appear on websites, beginner guides, social media graphics, teaching materials, kindred pages, and personal practice statements. They are often presented as if they are ancient Heathen ethics handed down from the Viking Age.

They are not.

The Nine Noble Virtues are a modern construction. They were codified in the twentieth century, not preserved as a formal moral code from pre-Christian Germanic religion. The Wild Hunt has previously reported that the Nine Noble Virtues were created by John Yeowell and John Gibbs-Bailey of the Odinic Rite in 1974, and that Yeowell had ties to white supremacist and fascist movements. The Troth has also described the Nine Noble Virtues as the most famous modern attempt at creating a Heathen ethical code, originally developed by the Odinic Rite, while making clear that they are not Viking Age ethics.

That history matters.

It does not mean that courage is racist.

It does not mean truth is racist.

It does not mean honour, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, self-reliance, industriousness, or perseverance are bad things.

But it does mean the package deserves scrutiny.

When modern Heathen communities say “no frith with Folkism” while continuing to treat the Nine Noble Virtues as a central moral framework, they risk rejecting the visible racism while preserving some of the architecture that racism helped popularize.

That is the uncomfortable part.

The problem is not only who wrote the list. If that were the only issue, the solution would be simple: acknowledge the source, strip away the bad actors, and reclaim the useful pieces.

But the deeper issue is the shape of the code itself.

Why these nine virtues?

Why this emphasis?

Why courage, discipline, self-reliance, industriousness, perseverance, fidelity, and honour as the central moral vocabulary?

Where are compassion, humility, repair, interdependence, care for the vulnerable, accountability after harm, ecological responsibility, or the hard work of restoring broken relationship?

Hospitality is there, yes. But even hospitality can be flattened into a performance of courtesy if it is not tied to genuine openness, protection, and obligation toward the stranger.

The Nine Noble Virtues produce a particular moral atmosphere. It is hard-edged. It favours strength, endurance, self-mastery, loyalty, labour, and personal toughness. Those can be meaningful values. They can also sit very comfortably inside authoritarian, exclusionary, and Folkish ideas of struggle, hierarchy, purity, and worth.

That does not make every person who uses the Nine Noble Virtues a Folkist. It does not make every kindred that references them racist. Many inclusive Heathens have used them sincerely, often because they were presented as standard beginner material.

But sincerity does not erase origin.

And use does not make a thing ancient.

A community serious about rejecting Folkism should be willing to ask whether its inherited ethics still carry Folkish assumptions, even after the racial language has been removed.

That is where “no frith with Folkism” must become more than a slogan.

Frith is not merely the absence of conflict. It is right relationship. It is trust, order, obligation, and peace maintained through honesty and accountability. If Folkism has distorted modern Heathenry, then restoring frith requires more than disavowing explicitly racist organizations. It requires examining the ideas, habits, symbols, and teaching tools that were normalized through those same networks.

The Nine Noble Virtues should not be treated as Heathen scripture.

They should not be treated as the Ten Commandments in Viking clothing.

They should not be placed at the centre of beginner Heathen education without context.

At most, they should be taught historically: as a modern ethical construction, emerging from specific twentieth-century Odinist and Folkish-adjacent environments, later adopted and adapted by many people who often did not know or fully examine that history.

That is a very different thing from treating them as the moral backbone of the faith.

If inclusive Heathenry wants to build something healthier, it needs more than a cleaned-up version of inherited Folkish-era ethics. It needs an ethic rooted in reciprocity, hospitality, responsibility, and repair. It needs to honour ancestors without turning ancestry into ownership. It needs to value courage without glorifying domination. It needs to value honour without turning honour into ego armour. It needs to value kinship without narrowing kinship into blood purity. It needs to value frith without confusing frith with silence.

There is an old temptation in modern Paganism to fill gaps quickly. When reconstructing broken traditions, we reach for lists, codes, symbols, slogans, and simplified teaching tools. That is understandable. People want something solid under their feet.

But not everything solid is sacred.

Sometimes the thing that feels like foundation is just old scaffolding from someone else’s project.

The Nine Noble Virtues may have helped some people articulate discipline, courage, and responsibility. That personal meaning does not have to be denied. But personal usefulness is not the same as communal legitimacy. A tool can be useful and still require retirement when its history and limitations become clear.

Inclusive Heathenry does not need to reclaim the Nine Noble Virtues.

It needs to demote them.

Study them. Contextualize them. Critique them. Understand why they spread. Understand why they appealed to people. Understand why they still appeal to people. But stop pretending they are ancient. Stop pretending they are neutral. Stop pretending they are the natural ethical centre of Heathen practice.

No frith with Folkism means no unexamined inheritance from Folkism either.

If the hall is to be rebuilt, we have to inspect the beams.

Not just the banner over the door.

References